On 10/5/2014 10:51 AM, nestork wrote:
'Don Phillipson[_3_ Wrote:
;3292416']Thompsons WaterSeal Advanced has been on the market
for a couple of years. The label promises "Easy soap & water
clean-up," the product apparently reformulated so as to comply
with European Union regulations restricting volatiles.

In practice, soap and water cleanup is by no means "easy."
The product contains some sort of wax that repels water
(and I dare say makes it effective on timber.) But what
sort of solvent can actually dissolve this component
so we can clean our brushes for reuse?
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

One of the reasons why it can be hard to remove water wash-up coatings
from a paint brush is because the wet coating gets drawn high up into
the "heel" of the brush by capillary pressure. The stuff that gets
drawn up into that area where the bristles are tightly packed together
will dry there while you're painting and result in "shaggy dog" paint
brushes where the bristles are spread out and the heel of the brush is
hard as a rock.

One way to avoid that problem is to wash the brush out in water and
shaking out the excess water BEFORE using it, and to periodically add
some water to the bristles near the ferrule using an eye dropper.

Doing that ensures that there's water high up in the bristles which will
prevent the water-clean-up coating you're applying from drying up and
hardening in that area, thereby ruining the paint brush.

You can buy an eye dropper for less than $2 at any pharmacy.

If your brush is already hard with dried up stuff, I would dip the brush
bristles in acetone or lacquer thinner, working the brush bristles after
each dipping. Don't just leave the brush bristles soaking in either
solvent. I expect both solvents would probably dissolve the Thompson's
Water seal but you can check to see which one works better by dipping a
Q-tip in either solvent and using that wet Q-tip to clean a small area
of that Thompson's water seal. Clean in an area where light reflects
off the Thompson water seal. If the solvent dissolves the stuff, the
surface of the area you cleaned will be rough and will scatter light
diffusely rather than specularly. That is, the cleaned surface will be
dull instead of glossy.




I used a paint roller to apply mine last year and just rinsed it off
when done. It was good enough to use this year and will be used next year.