Finishing and SCAQMD

I’m back!  I lost some momentum on posting to the blog when I went on vacation last month.  I’m hoping to get back on track and posting about once a week starting with this post.

My hall table was finished with gel polyurethane, which up until recently was one of my favorite finishes.  Woodkote made a very nice gel poly, called Jel’d Poly Kote, which I found to be easy to apply, allowed recoating in two hours, had reasonable build qualities, a generous working time, and gave great results.  What more could you ask for?

How about not changing the product???

Apparently, to meet the South Coast Air Quality Manangement District’s 2006 VOC requirements, WoodKote had to change the formulation.  According to the the MSDS, the old product had a VOC count of 589 grams/liter; the new product VOC is 273 g/l.  The old product had 35-45% naptha and 20-30% alkyd resin, the new product has no naptha and 15-25% alkyd resin.  I’m no chemist, but I know that naptha slows drying, and higher amounts of alkyd resin would(?) increase the build.

The result?  A runny, slow building, fast drying (short working time) product that is no better than any other of the gely poly’s I have tried (Rockler, General Finishes, and Behlen, if I remember correctly).  Very disappointing.

I’m just finding this out now because I finished off my old can in the middle of finishing the hall table.  If you know of another gel poly that is worth trying, please comment.  I’d love to try it out.