I have a 40 year old wood staircase the rails are 10" x 1" boards of pine -originally stained and heavily knotted. 20 years ago I cleaned, primed and painted with oil based white gloss. A year or so ago the gloss started to fail. I burned and scraped back to bare wood, applied a stainblock and over painted with two coats of water based white gloss. One single rail -the top one taking all the hand touching- is now having soft areas of paint which are easily peeled or rubbed off. Am I going to solve this by removing defective areas and repainting with an oil based paint? I suspect I should never have tried to paint this wood in the first place?
Thanks for the response. It is 'Wickes interior stain cover' which is solvent based (clean brushes with white spirit etc). This forms a dense white matt surface - so no, I didn't prime or undercoat.
That's your problem. Water base over oil base is a no.no.....oil and water do not mix, whereas oil base over water base is fine to do. Use Zinsser Bullseye 123 for stain block/ primer sealer, Crown Trade Fast Flow primer undercoat followed by two coats of Crown Trade Fast Flow gloss. With all the above products wash brushes out in warm soapy water. Other water base paints are available , Johnstone's Aqua range, Bedec Advance Aqua are also good products.
It's the oils in your skin on the paint. Listened to an American podcast and it was said to use water-based alkyd on rails and hand grabs or some clear coat varnish over acrylic gloss. This is covered on other forums and paint articles as a known problem.
@Astramax Op mentioned handrail going soft. This is a known thing.. As for painting over stainblock you can as far as I'm aware with some gloss paints but better to use an undercoat. I think it's the oils in hands vs how it was painted...
@Wayners @Astramax Thanks for your responses. If only I'd read the label....... Water over oil. No good. Oil over water. OK I'll scrape off ( it won't sand) re- prepare over sound stainblock, prime and use oil based gloss. Yellowing is not a problem - I'm old.
Yellowing of oil gloss is a big problem. I'm going to coat mine with a water based alkyd and see how it goes..