Sansin Foundation
One of Sansin’s great products that is often overlooked is called Foundation. It’s a one-coat wood treatment that you apply prior to your choice of stain that creates an excellent protective layer against the elements. It improves the performance of your top coat by preventing discolouration, stabilizing wood components, and reducing warping, shrinkage, and checking. It’s environmentally friendly and is easy to clean up with soap and water. The neutral colour allows you to use any top coat whether you’re looking for a natural or bold colour. It penetrates deeply into the wood, while still allowing it to breathe. This product is highly durable and provides great additional UV protection to your product. The low odour makes it a product that is safe to use indoors.
Cloverdale Sunfast Weather-Wise Western Red Cedar
Weatherwise Western Red
When Cloverdale approached us to create a colour to best represent Vancouver Island we jumped at the chance and it did not take long for our skilled team to come up with Weatherwise Western Red. This is a rich cedar colour with an emphasis on the browns.
Since it’s conception it has become quite popular both for the custom colour and for the quality of the stain. It isn’t uncommon to have customers directed here just for our colour. Many employees often use it for their fences and other projects.
What stain do I have? What can I put on-top of it?
It can be very difficult to determine what type of stain let alone what brand of stain is on the wood just from pictures. Just like car companies, most brands copy the colour and even the name of the colour of their competitors. It is very important to keep track of what stain you have on your product. We recommend on keeping the can and bringing it in so that we can identify what you need.
What we most often need to know is
- Oil or Water
- Brand Name
- Model Name
- Colour*
*Colour is nice but often with samples and the other information we can determine the colour.
As for what you can put on top on top of it. We wouldn’t recommend putting any different stain on top another unless it is specifically designed for that purpose. Such as Sikkens Cetol 1 is designed to have Cetol 23+ as a top coat. Other than that I would never recommend putting a different stain on top. Most often the chemical will react negatively with each other. Even if they are both oil stains.
Stain, the decision between Water-Borne and Petroleum Oil.
One of the most common questions we come across is which stain do we recommend. We carry 4 different brands of stain. Sikkens, Sunfast, Sansin, and TimberPro. Generally the first thing we ask is if they want to go with Petroleum Oil or Water-Borne stain.
More and more home owners are going with water-borne stains such as Sansin or TimberPro. This is because they are very comparable in durability to the petroleum oil stains, but are much easier to apply correctly. As a result, it can out preform the petroleum oil in many cases. Along with a soap and water clean up, and not having to deal with the fumes of petroleum oil based products. With the combination of all of those benefits it makes a much more do-it-yourself friendly.
With regulations having changed a few years ago many petroleum oil stains had to redo their formulas to comply with the new standards. The result for Sikkens was to remove much of their drying agent. In order for it to dry it must be exposed the both warmth and UV rays, but not during application. The wood must also be very dry with a moisture content between 12-15% depending on the stain model. Where as TimberPro and Sansin allow up to 21% moisture content. It may not seem like much but keep in mind it is increasing more difficult to reach lower levels.
Now it may seem so far that I don’t believe in using petroleum oil based stains. That is not the case. Our petroleum oil stains (Sikkens and Sunfast) are great products. A matter a fact many of our employees use them on their own projects. Many professionals consider so Sikkens product almost bullet-proof. The key is just proper preparation and application. For further details, either come in store and one of our staff would be happy to assist you.
How should I prepare my cedar deck before staining?
Weather-wise preparation list for decks
Optimally wood should be air dried and/or acclimatized for 2 weeks or more prior to preparation and finishing.
1. Sand lumber all 6 sides to remove any contaminates and mill glaze with 50-60 grit sand paper.
2. Wipe lumber clean of dust.
3.Apply stain by brush, roller, or sprayer to all 6 sides with the grain of the wood.
4.Back brush all runs and puddles.
5. Wait the recommended time between coats.
6.Do a light sand between coats with a medium to fine sand paper.
7.Wipe away the dust.
8.Apply and coat by brush, roller, or sprayer with the grain of the wood.
9.Wait recommended time before next coat or foot traffic.
10.Enjoy your new deck! If the above list is not followed the possible warranty on stain may be jeopardized.
