Timeless Wood Care Products, Inc.

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Q: What is order of appli­ca­tion of preser­v­a­tives, stains and sealants?

A: The sim­ple answer is:

• Borate preser­v­a­tives (Shell-Guard, Shell-GuardRTU, Armor-Guard) must be applied to bare wood sur­faces, so they must be applied before any stain or coating.
• Stains and clear top­coats (Life­line Ultra-2, Life­line Exterior/Interior, Life­line Advance, Acrylic Satin/Gloss etc.) should gen­er­ally be applied after the preser­vatives, but before the sealants. This is eas­i­est and usu­ally gives the best-finished appear­ance for the whole job.
• Exter­nal sealants (Perma-Chink, Energy Seal,Check Mate) should be the last appli­ca­tion co the house.
• Vari­a­tions: If your desire is co make Energy Seal as incon­spic­u­ous as pos­si­ble, then you can apply it before the stain, but after exper­i­ment­ing with the Energy Seal color and the stain co get the best pos­si­ble match. Con­tact Time­less Wood Care Prod­ucts for more information.

Q: How do I know what color your stain will be on my house?

A: Trans­par­ent stains like Life­line, Cetol, and Weath­erseal develop to a color that is depen­dent on the grain struc­ture, poros­ity and color of the under­ly­ing wood. The only way that you can know how your stain will look on your wood is to eval­u­ate a sam­ple on your wood sur­faces using sim­i­lar prepa­ra­tion and appli­ca­tion tech­niques that you will use on your house. You may order sam­ples for you to test on your wood in our online store.

Q: How do I treat or pre­vent wood rot?

A: Wood rot is caused by fungi that cause struc­tural decay. Dry wood with a mois­ture con­tent of less than 20% will not sup­port the growth of decay fungi. Borate preser­v­a­tives like Shell-Guard, Shell-Guard RTU, Armor-Guard and Cobra-Rods kill and pre­vent the growth of decay fungi thus pre­vent­ing the spread of rot. The best prac­tice is to apply a borate preser­v­a­tive to bare wood then coat the wood with a water-resistant fin­ish such as Life­line. In sit­u­a­tions where the wood has already been coated or is in con­tact with the ground, such as deck posts, Cobra Rods are the best preser­v­a­tive to use.

If you are treat­ing exist­ing wood rot, the first step is to remove any soft or decayed wood, then treat the area with Shell-Guard or Shell-Guard RTU to kill any live fungi. Once dry you can then use M-Balm and E– Wood to con­sol­i­date the wood fibers and fill in any voids. Finally, apply your Life­line fin­ish sys­tem and sealants such as Log End Seal and Energy Seal to keep water from pen­e­trat­ing into the decay prone area.

Q: How do I pre­vent ter­mites, bee­tles and car­pen­ter ants? How do I erad­i­cate exist­ing infestation?

A: Treat­ing your home dur­ing con­struc­tion with Shell-Guard RTU is the best and eas­i­est way to pre­vent rot and wood destroy­ing insects from becom­ing a prob­lem. How­ever, if you dis­cover an infes­ta­tion of wood bor­ing bee­tles or decay fungi in an exist­ing home, Shell­Guard and Shell-Guard RTU can be used to elim­i­nate them. Elim­i­nat­ing ter­mites and car­pen­ter ants present more of a chal­lenge to the home­owner and it is best to con­sult a pest con­trol pro­fes­sional to deter­mine the best course of treatment.

Q: I have an oil-based stain on my house now. Can I use LIFELINE over it?

A: Life­line is a water-based, latex fin­ish. The gen­eral rule of thumb is that you can put water-based latex fin­ish over an oil fin­ish, but you can­not put an oil based fin­ish over a water-based latex fin­ish. Most oil fin­ishes are pen­e­trat­ing types that lose their water repel­lency and good appear­ance in just a few months. Unless the oil based fin­ish aggres­sively repels water or is oily and waxy on the sur­face it can be re-coated with Life­line. A thor­ough clean­ing to insure good adhe­sion and appear­ance is usu­ally all that is required. If the oil fin­ish is a film-forming type, then you should per­form an adhe­sion test to make sure that the exist­ing fin­ish will not peel off after the appli­ca­tion of a new finish.

Q: How long should I wait after clean­ing my walls to apply stain?

A: This period is a bal­ance between the time required to let the log sur­faces dry and the time allowed for con­t­a­m­i­nates to set­tle on the wood before you put stain on. We sug­gest that before you apply your exte­rior stain, that you wash the walls with a solu­tion of 1–4 (bleach-water) to ster­il­ize the wood sur­face and then rinse it com­pletely off. This helps to pre­vent mold/ mildew growth under­neath the stain film. Allow enough time for the logs to dry before apply­ing your first coat of stain. If more than about 5 days has elapsed, then it is a good idea to clean again. Like all qual­ity fin­ishes, our fin­ishes have enough mildew­cides to pre­vent mold or mildew from grow­ing on the fin­ish, but not to erad­i­cate an active infes­ta­tion in the wood (which may not be vis­i­ble at the time that you apply finish.)

Q: How long do stains last and how often do I need to re-stain?

A: Perma-Chink Sys­tems has devoted a sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment in devel­op­ing and test­ing exte­rior stains. The result of this effort is the most durable trans­par­ent stain sys­tem avail­able today — Life­line Ultra-2 with Life­line Advance top­coat. This fin­ish sys­tem has out­lasted every high qual­ity com­pet­i­tive stain that we have com­pared it to in lab­o­ra­tory and real world tests.

Life­line Ultra-2 and Life­line Advance fin­ish sys­tem car­ries a 5-year lim­ited war­ranty (see war­ranty terms for spe­cific details.) Your exte­rior stain will require less main­te­nance if you use one with higher lev­els of pig­ments. With our stain sys­tem, most of your mainte­nance con­sists of peri­od­i­cally renew­ing the top­coat. After many years, color coat main­te­nance will be required.

Q: Why shouldn’t I use a clear exte­rior stain?

A: If your desire is to keep your logs look­ing just like they do when they have no fin­ish on them, then your best approach is to select a pig­mented stain that is the same color as the bare wood. The longest last­ing IN block­ers in stain are the pig­ments that sta­bi­lize the color of the stain and wood. There are no long-lasting clear exte­rior stains. UV inhibitors are spe­cialty com­pounds that serve to keep the stain film itself intact, but are not able to pre­vent IN dam­age to the wood sur­face over the long haul.

Q: Why should I apply an inte­rior stain?

A: Wood is a porous mate­r­ial that absorbs odors from the air, oils from the skin and liq­uids from clean­ing solu­tions. It is dif­fi­cult to clean dust from bare wood sur­faces. And finally, unpro­tected wood will darken over time from expo­sure co day­light. Putting pig­mented Life­line Inte­rior on your walls sta­bi­lizes the wood color, high­lights the wood grain and makes an easy-co-clean sur­face that does not absorb house­hold odors.

Q: I had a local paint­ing con­trac­tor give me a bid for power wash­ing my 10 year old log cabin. They said this was the best method of removal for tak­ing old stain off the walls. I heard corn blast­ing is bet­ter. What do you think?

D. Bar­reth, Alpena, MI

A: TWCP does not rec­om­mend power wash­ing your log home or cabin with any­thing over 500 psi. What hap­pens is the pres­sure dri­ves the water so deep into the wood fiber that it will never dry out prop­erly. The best way to strip a home is with corn blast­ing as it’s a dry process and keeps the logs dry for the stain­ing process. If media blast­ing is imprac­ti­cal because of your loca­tion, we offer envi­ron­men­tally safe chem­i­cal strip­pers which you can use.