Paint Brush maintenance - wire brush and flea comb and a gong for Minwax Lacquer
Recently I had to lacquer several hundred boards, and I was using Minwax Oil Modified PU lacquer (Satin) which is about $55 for 4 litres locally. It says on the can that it is superfast drying - they're not wrong about that. The weather was pretty warm and the boards were mostly touch dry in just a few minutes.
That's great for handling, but it leads to another problem - the lacquer also dries on the outside brush bristles very quickly, and in about 30-45 minutes there was a build up of lacquer on the bristles which was starting to affect the finish. As an aside, the rapid drying also restricted the self levelling properties of the lacquer.
The answer was to use a wire brush on the paint brush, in the same way as a hair brush is used. That separated the coarser bits that were stuck together, and then by following up with a flea comb the brush comes up nearly as good as new (probably would have been like new had I adopted this procedure from the start). In the countless times that I did this I think only about 6 bristles were removed (prolly had to much dried lacquer to get through the comb).
A quick rapid-roll between the palms to expel any loose particles and I was off again. Very very few left over particles got put back onto the job.
And as for the Minwax lacquer - very happy with the result. These are boards to line the shed walls with so finish standard was not crucially important. I had previously used this product on the Yellow tongue floor and found it to be pretty durable. Sanded the wall boards (Cypress) to 150 grit, two coats of lacquer (rollered on with brush finish), sanded to 220 grit and vacced off, final coat, and they are very smooth indeed. :2tsup:
Since then I have used the same brush for applying Sikkens Exterior Oil to the few boards that are being used externally, and the brush still looks fantastic (for me - and that's a bit of a record :doh:).
