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Thixotropic Materials - Understanding The Difference Between Floor Paints, Wall Paints, and Basic Marine Type Resins/Epoxies
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Thixotropic Materials - Understanding The Difference Between Floor Paints, Wall Paints, and Basic Marine Type Resins/Epoxies
What is the difference between floor paint (or floor epoxy) and wall paint (wall epoxy)? Can I paint my boat/grill, etc. with the Marine Epoxy I used to build my canoe?
The key to understanding the answers to these questions is called THIXOTROPHY.
Wall paints and epoxy paints have THIXOTROPHIC additives in them. Floor paints, marine epoxies, water, etc. do
not.
Basically Thixotrophic additives are gelling agents. They give the product a 'gel' type status when not disturbed.
The gel property goes away when the product is moved. For a paint, be it an enamel or an epoxy, the thixotrophic
agent gels the product once the brushing or rolling of the product is complete. This 'gelling' affect means that
the paint applied to the top of the wall will be as thick as the paint applied to the bottom of the wall. Water
is not thixotrophic, that's why when you wet down a wall with water and come back a little while later, the bottom
of the wall is wet and the top of the wall is dry. The water continued to flow down the wall, collecting at the
bottom of the wall. It did not 'gel' or set after it was applied, thus letting gravity pull the water down.
We want to paint our walls with a thixotrophic coating so that we'll have the same thickness of paint at the top
as on the bottom of the wall. However, we don't want our floor paint to be thixotrophic. The more it continues
to flow after application the more it will self level and even itself out. Using a thixotrophic paint on the floor
might leave brush or roller marks and it might not level out smoothly or quickly. Thixotrophic additives are the
big difference between epoxy paints and epoxy floor paints.
Marine epoxies are like epoxy floor paints. They do not contain any thixotrophic additives.
Converting your marine epoxy/epoxy resin or floor paint/epoxy to a thixotrophic coating/paint can be done by adding
a thixotrophic agent. Fumed Silica, (also known by the brand names Cabosil® and Aerosil® - we sell Aerosil
R202 by the quart. For more info on Fumed Silica - click here) is a very common epoxy thickener (add about
2 parts fumed silica to 1 part epoxy and you get a putty like epoxy), but it is also a common thixotrophic additive
(unless you add so much that you create epoxy putty!). Probably adding something like 1 part fumed silica to 1
or 2 parts epoxy is about right. As you are mixing it into the epoxy (a real pain - fumed silica is extremely light
and floats in the air, getting on your clothes, etc. It doesn't like being mixed into the thick, gummy epoxy, but
everyone does it anyway!) nothing much seems to happen. The epoxy will not appear to be getting thicker (the 'gel'
affect happens when the product is sitting still). But it is doing its job as a THIXOTROPHIC AGENT. See Aerosil
R 202 Fumed Silica in our marine catalog - click
here.
Third party explanation of THIXOTROPHY - click here
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Knowledge is Power - We like informed consumers!
Learn the basics of epoxy at our educational EPOXY 101 page - Click Here.
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Understanding The Difference Between Floor Paints, Wall Paints, and Basic Marine Type Resins/Epoxies -- CLICK HERE