I could literally go on for days about this subject. I have years of experience working with chemical companies "test driving" different coatings for their industry. This "side work" came from years of sanding and finishing hardwood floors, through this experience I came to work with many of the lead chemist's for many of the top finish companies, Loba international,Bona, Sherwin Williams, RPM, Betco, Quaker Color to name a few, and through this work and experience, I came to understand a couple of things.
1. virtually every chemical solvent is detrimental to your health
2.you are being used as a guinea pig
3.while many of these formulas work, barring msds sheets and known chemical interactions with the human body, these people have no idea of what the long term exposure consequences are. What ever they are, they will be minimized on the lables.
About waterbase finish, and absolute chemical crap shoot.
Carbodomide, Isocyante, Poly Functional Azridine are the primary catalyst's used in waterbase finish. Everyone of them is a sensitizer to both skin and lungs, so great less VOC offgasses into the atmoshphere, but you now get to play russian roulette with your health based on chemical companies being mandated to drop voc levels. Emulsion finishes which use simple oxygen crosslinking to dry often times use glycol esters in order to bind oil/water solvents together, they are seriously nasty chemicals, most 1 part waterbase finishes have just as bad of chemical stews as the 2 pak, Methyl pyrrolidone and Triethylamine are not "happy" chemicals for example.
at any rate I would sum this up as this, what I learned over all my years was this;
The best varnishes in the world were created/ "invented" in the 1400's, perhaps earlier. These are the varnishes that modern chemistry basically went to war against and had a massive propaganda campaign against.
These varnishes were sold to you as "inferior" when compared to the varnishes that "modern chemistry" has created for you, an absolute lie sold to yo by the petro chemical industry who had no other goal than to be able to use and sell the byproducts from petroleum.
Again the "ancient" varnishes beyond being much safer, as the solvent is turpitine, are far superior in so many ways that its not even funny. The primary advantages of the ancient varnishes are.
1. chemical saftey compared to other solvents
2. durability, these are the varnishes that are applied to "Italian" violins and other wooden objects . Many of these violins are pushing 4-500 years old and still have perfect varnish that not only has remained stable {no chipping, peeling, checking, cracking } over this extended period of time, but most importantly, the solids once converted in the cooking process remain absolutely transparent after all this time.
3. these varnishes refractive indexes are the most similar and or transparent to natural wood, therefore any chatonoyance in wood grain will be celebrated more so than with other solid bases
These varnishes primariliy use 3 simple ingredients, Linseed oil, Turpintine, and various Conifer resins. This is advanced alchemy that uses some very cool tricks in the cooking process to infuse minerals and metals into the varnish that once cooked, bind all compounds into an irreversible formula to make a varnish that will remain stable and transparent for hundreds of years.
These varnishes can be purchased, or they can be made and perfected by one at home with some basic precautions.
Basically if I could sum it up; the entire modern coatings industry is a lie that revolves around profit and a bunch of early propaganda that was instilled in order to make these varnishes I'm talking about go "byebye".
And I would say that they were very successful at driving people away for using, understanding or wanting these old formulas. They were very good at making you think that old stuff sucks and this new "better living through chemisty" products are better, the proof of this is somewhat in the pudding in that in the entire world there are a mere handful of people who manufactuer these linseed,turp,pine sap varnishes.
The other very appealing thing about these old world varnishes is their application benefits.
1. touch ups can be done without leaving a shorline {things blend and become invisible, you can;t tell where the touch up was done
2. Thick looking, but absolutely the thinnest layers can be applied.
These products are applied by hand, and when I say hand, I mean HAND. You take a brush, dip in the varnish, pat some finish blobs on the work, then with a raw hand, you quickly swirll and smear the varnish on to the wood. Then simply pat it out, it has self leveling properties that rival oil modifiesd urethane, so it lays down super thin but also drys very even.
I would encourage anyone who does their own varnish to look into it, not only does it provide a superior final product, but it is much, much safer to use.
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