Wood Hardener staying tacky and soft - temperature?

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Morning all. My "summer" restore-the-fascias-on-the-house project is running over slightly and I'm trying to sort out one area of pretty rotten barge board at the moment.

Trouble is, the Ronseal Wet Rot Wood Hardener I've bought for it just isn't curing. It's been on there since Tuesday (now Friday) and it's still damp, sticky and not at all hard...

Datasheet/tin has nothing on there about temperature, and I would've thought the thinners in it would have no issue evaporating even at 5-10°C.

What are your experiences with it? Is it just temperature and I need to get a hairdryer on it? or is it just a load of carp and I've now got to chop all this sticky wood out which is exactly what I was trying to avoid...? (increasing number of 1 star reviews I'm seeing suggest this may be the case)

Thanks for your thoughts...
 
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Wood needs to be be dry before application.
Just read up on one it. Dries in 10 mins so something is not right
 
Thanks for the reply. I did a test on a bone dry bit of scrap wood from the garage and brought it into the house to dry. It's still tacky 24h later (18-20°C ~60% humidity) so something's up with it. I've ripped out the soft sticky wood on the barge board in question and have a LOT of filling to do now, I ended up drying off the dribbles with a hairdryer as best I could. I seem to see a lot of people bemoaning some formulation change when it went from an Acetone solvent to a White Spirit one in the last few years. No idea if that's true, but maybe your experience is with the old stuff?

What a waste of money and more importantly time this has turned out to be. Definitely wouldn't recommend it. I spoke to the customer helpline and they just said to brush on acetone for some reason. It didn't help.
 
Yeah. Something has gone wrong. So much chemical bans has not helped the performance of products now.
Repair care dry flex 4 or fit new wood would be my recommendation.
Hardener then 2 pack filler don't last a year sometimes.
 
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Did you shake the can? At times, I did experience long drying times and I gave it 24 hours in the summer. The low temperatures won't help. Acetone is a solvent for paint. They are trying to thin down what you have applied to make it easier to dry.
 
not really ideal to have any rot remaining
you remove 95%plus and replace with new glued in wood to replace the strength its the very odd bit you cant reach easily thats left that you stabilize as it has pretty much zero strength a bit like a plastic coat to hold it together but not much else
 
Did you shake the can? At times, I did experience long drying times and I gave it 24 hours in the summer. The low temperatures won't help. Acetone is a solvent for paint. They are trying to thin down what you have applied to make it easier to dry.

I am not aware of oil or water based paints that use acetone as a solvent. I believe that it may be used as an anti-skinning agent in 2K paints. That said, I bunked my chemistry lessons. Acetone will however soften dried water based paint, not a quickly as cellulose thinners though. Cellulose will blister waterbased paints in seconds.

The MSDS sheet for the wood hardener however does mention acetone as an ingredient, so yeah, I guess that the technical support team are trying to get the OP to thin it.

 
Yeah. Something has gone wrong. So much chemical bans has not helped the performance of products now.
Repair care dry flex 4 or fit new wood would be my recommendation.
Hardener then 2 pack filler don't last a year sometimes.

I had been meaning to let you know that Oxera seem to have finished updating their website.

£25 for epoxy resin filler (incl VAT and delivery). Wayyyy, wayyyy cheaper than either Repair Care or Timbabuild.
 
Acetone will however soften dried water based paint
As a solvent should. Acetone is not normally used because it evaporates too quickly to allow working time. The hardener is a special paint that needs a strong solvent like acetone. Not mixing the paint properly is most likely causing the non-drying.
 
As a solvent should. Acetone is not normally used because it evaporates too quickly to allow working time. The hardener is a special paint that needs a strong solvent like acetone. Not mixing the paint properly is most likely causing the non-drying.

The drying issue may well be the result of a failure to shake the tin but I have experienced something similar with two pack wood hardeners that you mix yourself. The throw away brush in the mixing pot goes hard, but the 2 pack remains tacky for up to 3 days where it touches existing paint. The stuff on the bare wood however has hardened nicely. I suspect it is down to humidity levels.

The hardener that the OP used is not a paint though, it is a clear liquid. I would have thought that the acetone would be lighter than most of the other ingredients (whatever they may be).
 
It is a paint, but a specialised thin paint designed to seep into wood. The acetone is to thin that paint down so that it seeps better. The hardener is a derivative of the oil version of this: https://www.ronseal.com/products/diamond-hard-floor-varnish/

The thin-ness of the hardener is probably what caused people, including me, to not shake the can because we believed it's a single liquid inside. It isn't. The solvent and the paint are at different depths in the can.
 
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Morning all, thanks for the replies.

You're right I didn't give it a great shake when I put it on the barge board, however when I did the test piece I did shake it hard for a solid minute, as I assumed the problem was with me or settling. >72 hours in the house and that test piece is still just as tacky and soft as the stuff outside.

I realise what the solvent is for within the product , it just seemed odd to me that the problem with *not enough solvent evaporating* was *apply more solvent*. I'll contact them again anyway.

Thanks for the heads up on Oxera and Dry Flex. I've gone to town on the board with a wire brush and drill and there's probably enough solid stuff remaining to take a fill.

Cheers
 
It is a paint, but a specialised thin paint designed to seep into wood. The acetone is to thin that paint down so that it seeps better. The hardener is a derivative of the oil version of this: https://www.ronseal.com/products/diamond-hard-floor-varnish/

The thin-ness of the hardener is probably what caused people, including me, to not shake the can because we believed it's a single liquid inside. It isn't. The solvent and the paint are at different depths in the can.

You are losing me... the product that you linked to is a waterbased product. I suspect that you are suggesting that
Thanks for the heads up on Oxera and Dry Flex. I've gone to town on the board with a wire brush and drill and there's probably enough solid stuff remaining to take a fill.

Cheers

Oxera, like Timbabuild do a "1 hour" and a "4 hour" epoxy resin filler.


If you are splicing in new timber on the barge board, definitely go for the 1 hour. There are however a number of caveats.

To begin with:

1. If the surrounding wood is still soft, regardless of whether you are splicing in timber or using the 1 hour as a regular filler, as you sand the filler, it will rip any remaining softwood that is still soft.

2. If you buy the Oxera, or Timbabuild, you need to buy the compatible double barrelled gun. They can be found for £25 and upwards. Repaircare are the only one that I know of that sells a tube that will work in regular caulking gun. Most of their products are twin (separate) tubes and their cheapest gun, at about £35 is plastic carp [sic]. However, their single tube epoxy is really expensive given how little there is in the tube.

3. Regardless of which brand of epoxy resin you go for, you need to extrude the recommended amount from the tube the first time you use the tube. If you do not you may mix up filler that never cures.

4. At this time of the year, ignore the general curing times. The figures quoted are for an ambient temperature of about 25 degrees centigrade. In the past, over winter, during the frost, I have had to wait 3 days before I could sand a "1 hour" epoxy. RepairCare do sell one that will cure "quickly" at zero degrees- I haven't used it though. Most of the firms will provide info regarding curing times at given temperature ranges. Just remember, the greater the volume of filler, the faster it will harden (because of the catalytic process).

5. They are really "sticky" products. They are nothing like mixing 2 pack "car" filler. You have to be meticulous when mixing them. And even if you you are, the filling knife that you mixed it with may be tacky for a number of days after if you don't clean it properly. I either rotate knives or use decorator wipes to clean them. I use (the smooth underside of) off cuts of laminate flooring as a mixing board. Again I can rotate between a number of "boards".

6. They are much harder to sand than the "car" fillers. The 1 hours isn't too bad, but the 4 hour (which is mainly used to fill really large sections that are structurally important) cannot sanded by hand (you need a really decent sander).

7. Although the above may steer you to other fillers, they are the only ones that are designed for the job in hand. As @Wayners said, they are the correct fillers to use. If cost is a factor, paint all of the wood, and if your filler is going fail, then at least when the filler fails, hopefully the paint under the filler will still be sound.

8. I am now on my 4th pint- any further questions, I will reply to tomorrow
 

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