Best stain and clear sealant for wood window sashes and frames?

Hi,
I'm interested in your opinions of the best wood stain products and sealants to use on wood window sashes and frames. This is on the inside of our house.

We recently purchased 22 new Pella wood windows for our home and need to finish them. Ideally we would like the product to dry quickly as we have so many of them to do.

We have been told not to use polyurethane as it will breakdown from the UV rays.

Any suggestions for Stain and Sealant products would be helpful. Also any tips on techniques for performing the task are also appreciated.

Thanks so much.

Don't use any silicon sealants. You'll never get any finish to stick to them.

Oil based wood satins should be OK, even use oils like a good outdoor furniutre oil etc.

This is the $64K question!!

For timber that is exposed to UV, the darker the coating the less UV is transmitted to the timber. You need this as timber especially the more white the wood go black from UV damage. This is easy to see in a boat yard where traditionally spar timbers were just clear coated then a few years down the track the timber is that ugly black underneath then the coating crazes and falls off. Exposed timbers, dry rot, ##### load of maintenance.

In external coatings there are no clear UV protectors (like safety glasses) only tints (like wearing zinc cream instead of a rub in sunscreen). There are clear coatings but anything clear lets the UV through therefore a waste of time as this damages the timber beneath.

From recently doing large reno to front of house I found that the Sikkens external laquers are very good. But for your case they miss out on the "quick to dry" criteria as these products have a 16 hour waiting time between coats. But if you want to have a great looking finish which shows the grain of your timber, you have to be patient. I fitted loose pin hinges to the doors because I realised that the drying times were extended and you can't keep removing doors all the time or you will wear out the screw holes.

With Sikkens you need 4 coats - 2 coats of the base sealer stain then 2 coats of the almost clear top coat. These products are very thin in buildup and 4 is definitely a minimum.

There have been a few threads on this subject my comments in one were

http://www.woodworkforums.ubeaut.com...ghlight=wattyl

Rgds