To be fair more and more manafacturers are slowing getting rid of oil based paints. You wont be able to get any soon. You need to start trying to get along with water based paints. They have come on leaps and bounds over the last couple of years. Ive been painting 39 years and am practically all water based now.
I doff my cap to you.
I hate waterbased paints. They drive me up the wall.
I recently got called back to a job that I had originally painted to a high standard using Dulux Trade oil based eggshell. It had subsequently been repainted, 18 months ago, with Crown water based eggshell.
I only noticed that it was WB when I ran my fingernail down a door frame and it peeled off. I had to use plastic scrapers to scrape the water based eggshell off without damaging the oil based eggshell underneath it.
I did find a waterbased paint that I thought that I liked (Eico). With a bit of Floetrol it flowed nicely and I was pleased that I could sand out any tramlines between coats. I had to use oil based undercoat though, otherwise the old yellowed white paint underneath would show through once the WB had dried.
That job went well but required me to apply more coats than I would have if using OB exclusively.
Half a year later, I used the same paint and same OB undercoat. Pretty much everywhere that the paint gets touched by hand, it has become soft and peeled off. I can only assume that is a direct result of the fact that the occupant uses cocoa butter on their hands. Oils seem to soften WB paints. I have seen factory sprayed kitchen units with the same problems, the acid cat primer however is fine.
On another job I used Johnstones WB eggshell. It was horrible to work with and the client complained about the fact that keys and coins left black marks on the surfaces. I reminded him that he had specified the paint.
I want to like WB paints but I don't.
Non-yellowing is a big plus but with some of them, you still need to wait until the next day to recoat and they tend to ruin my brushes even though I mist them throughout the working day. The need to apply more coats hurts my pockets...
And don't get me started on Dulux trade Weathershield primer. The pre 2010 VOC complaint solvent based stuff was great. You could paint it on and then apply a coat of UC within 4 hours (or after 16). Now they want you to apply two coats of their WB primer and then wait 16 hours, AND you have to sand the stuff. I can only imagine that they used the primer as a bargaining chip to allow them to increase the solvent levels in the UC and gloss (thereby allowing the 3 part paint system to fall within the required VOC levels).
I can't see trade paints becoming exclusively WB any time soon. I can see retail paints becoming totally WB though.
Sorry about the rant. In the main I agree with your replies and sage advice, but in this case, I will have to respectfully disagree.
No offence intended.