I used the samples I had prepared for the appearance study I recently posted for several waterborne products, with Arm-R-Seal as the comparative oil based product, to test their chemical and heat resistance.
I used yellow mustard, Windex, and Breckenridge bourbon (a favorite of the auther) to see how the specimens compared. I used a small dallop of mustard, and 1/2 ml of Windex and bourbon, and left them on the specimens for 1 hour. This photo is after some period of time, but I can't remember if it was the full hour. The specimens were Arm-R-Seal on the left, then EnduroVar, then GF's High Performance, and TC's EM-8000CV with w/o crosslinker on the right.
At the end of 1 hour they looked like this:
The mustard did nothing to any of them. Windex and bourbon had no effect on ARS or EnduroVar. The High Performance specimen had a white spot from both the Windex and bourbon. With the EM-8000CV, Windex and bourbon wet through the finish and the bourbon left a white shadow.
Close ups:
At this point, only EnduroVar had matched the performance of ARS.
Next I tested how the specimens did against exposure to hot water. I filled coffee cups with boiling water and placed them on the specimens, then drooled 2 ml of the hot water down the edge of the cup, and left them for 1 hour.
After I removed the cups:
And after drying the specimens:
I forgot to take a picture of the ARS specimen but it was unaffected.
To test the heat resistance I used coffee cups heated in an oven to 350F, then set them straight on to the specimens and left them until they had cooled back to room temperature. Then I removed them and examined for any damage.
Left cup is EnduroVar over Sealcoat, then EM-8000CV over Sealcoat, then ARS.
Afterwards:
The ARS was unaffected, but you can see where the cups bonded slightly to both the EnduroVar and EM-8000CV specimens.
My conclusions from this testing is that no uncatalyzed waterborne is resistant to chemicals and heat as Arm-R-Seal, and likely most oil based varnishes. Of the finishes I tested, EnduroVar was the best, suffering only very slight damage from the hot water and hot cup tests. I knew High Performance was not that resistant to Windex so the current results were no surprise, but I was very surprised to see how poorly the EM-8000CV performed, being damaged to some degree by everything except mustard. With that in mind I decided to see how EM-8000CV would do with the Crosslinker added. That will be reported in the next post.
John