Crosslink or Catalyze your paint? Which is better?

did you crosslink or should you catalyze your coating so i used from sintering coatings i use their 1107 primer which is a primer that has to be catalyzed when you're using it and it's catalyzed at 15 percent as a pot life of three hours and then a top coat with their 28 series liner products and they are 2k polys and they range from anywhere from flat satin to semi-gloss to gloss so you have an option and i highly recommend the flat it's absolutely amazing but you know should you catalyze these coatings or cross-link these coatings when it comes to the primer the primer is a tanning and dye blocking primer and it does have to be catalyzed regardless of how you use it you catalyze it at 15 you don't have the option to cross link it it does need to big catalyzed and on that catalyzation process is going to give you a tannin blocking and dye migration bleed it'll stop that you've got to let it set for eight hours and then it's also going to give you you know better chemical resistance and water resistance now when it comes to the top coat should you cross-link or catalyze the top coat so you do have the option it's a 2k product that you can do either so what is a cross linking do cross linking adding a cross linker at 15 is going to add more chemical resistance and it's going to add more water resistance to your coating which is pretty important when it comes to cabinet coating vanity coating and in bathrooms and it could could even make a difference on an entertainment center so cross linking adds chemical resistance and it adds more water resistance and chemical resistance is important because there's a lot of cleaners a lot of chemicals underneath people's kitchen sinks so do you really need to cross link the 2800 series 2k poly 2k poly just in in talking to the chemist who designed it and created it for century encodings he doesn't think you need to cross-link it because it's already um a superior product to begin with and he doesn't think it adds a whole lot by cross-linking it but he does highly recommend catalyzing it and catalyzing it is a different process cross-linking it when you cross link it you can it doesn't add a hardener to it so the product doesn't harden it doesn't have a pot life where it's going to harden where it could ruin your sprayer or you cannot use the product after the pot life ends you can take a product that's been catalyzed and the pot life would be over uh five to six hours and then you can re-um cross-link it again so um i think if i said that wrong it's cross-linking so if you cross-link it and the pot life ends you can re-cross-link it you just have to add a certain amount of the product back in fresh product and then you can re-cross-link it it's one of the beauties of a cross-linker but um you're not adding a whole lot to the product and you're spending a lot more money cross-linking it so it's better just to either use it 1k right out of the can or the pot or to catalyze it now we'll talk a little bit about what catalyzing does to the product itself okay so the 2800 series products in all that line the flat satin semi-gloss gloss products um you can catalyze them and catalyzing is adding a hardener to the product which um adds a pot life to it so it's um there's a five to six hour pot life so there's a window that you got to make sure that you clean your sprayer out before that paw life ends because you could ruin your product because what it does the product starts to harden even in the can so it gets super hard and you would actually ruin your sprayers so catalyzing what it does you're adding a hardener to the paint and it gives you better bonding capabilities it makes the product product harder like a cross linker it adds chemical resistance it adds water resistance it does add chip mar and scratch resistance and then by catalyzing it you're actually adding to the product a better look and a better feel to the product so there is a difference when you've got a lot of experience with these coatings when you catalyze it you definitely can feel the difference and see the difference between a catalyzed product when you catalyze it you have an extremely superior product um compared to what's actually in the can and that's something that you should just always do to your cabinets vanities and even entertainment centers these things that are high traffic units that you're actually painting and coding um we're actually coding them we're not painting them because we're using a polyurethane so you're coating them with a 2k poly so it's really good to do um good to do good practice it's good for your customer it's good for you for confidence when it comes to uh warranties so you're less likely to have warranty related issues um especially like us we're i'm given a guarantee of five years you know on all of our cabinet repaints and coding so um it's highly highly recommended to catalyze your top coats so do you need to catalyze your um you know every coat that you do if you catalyze your first coat that's i'm going over the top of your primer coat or it's going over the top of a previous coating that you sanded and created a mechanical bond that that by catalyzing it you're going to get a superior bond to your surface and that's extremely you know giving you some confidence you know that know that you're going to get a good bond it's not going to come off and that's extremely important to me now if you don't catalyze the next coat that goes over the top of that you do need to sand in between your coats because you do have a catalyzed product that's hardening extremely fast so you not only sand so you get a mechanical bond in between coats but that way you can eliminate and see any imperfections as you're sanding over on your inspection light and you're continuing to create an extremely flat finish which is very important when you're doing high-end coatings you always want to sand to make sure that that finish is extremely flat but um if you don't top coat your final coat then you're not going to be getting that chip resistance on the top coat you're not going to be getting the chemical resistance you're not going to be getting that moisture resistance on that top go so it really is important to um to catalyze you know each code i know that's you know you are um limited by a pot life and then when that pot life experience expires you know that products no um not any good anymore but if you do proper planning you know it's um it's typically gonna work out for you you're gonna be able to get all your coats in and um get them done same day or if you don't if you can't get all your coats in you always just catalyze what you're going to need to use on that day so if i think i'm only going to use a half a gallon i'm going to catalyze a half gallon and then spray that half gallon if i need more i'll do pour off and catalyze some more so one tip when it comes to catalyzing your product you're always going to want to leave a certain amount left behind for touch-ups that you should like in a quart can do a little bit of pour off because you never want to end up with nothing to um not be able to do touch-ups with so that's a kind of just a professional tip you know always leave something you know behind for touch-ups because once you do catalyze it whatever's left the next day it's going to be in the can it's going to be you know completely hard and non-usable [Music] [Applause] you