Bed Wood Painting Fiasco

[pjmoreland]

I purchased a pine wood set from Mar-K a few months ago for my stepside bed. My plan was to follow their guidance on painting it first with POR-15 and then with exterior enamel. The coats of POR-15 went on fine, although the surface finish ended up quite rough, so I sanded it with 220 grit prior to applying the enamel. The guidance from Mar-K didn't specify latex or oil enamel, so I purchased a can of latex. I got insecure at the last minute due to the fact that POR-15 is cleaned up with lacquer thinner, so I purchased some oil base paint instead.

This was a big mistake!

I applied the first coat of oil based enamel during the evening, so the lighting wasn't too great. I guess I didn't do the best job of cleaning up the boards after sanding the POR-15 (blew them off with an air compressor) because there were hundreds of little bumpy specks in the paint. Also, the first coat of enamel took a full week to get to the point where it was no longer tacky to the touch.

At that point I sanded the paint down to eliminate the bumps and applied a second coat of paint. Now that we are getting into spring, there are lots of bugs out, especially in the evening. I made the mistake of leaving my garage door open, and a few dozen bugs landed in the paint. Thankfully, this second coat was dry enough by the next day that I was able to sand the bugs out and apply a third coat. Within about 15 minutes of applying the third coat, ridges started forming in the underlying layers of paint due to being reactivated by the fresh paint! I called a buddy of mine who owns a painting company, and he suspected this was a result of cleaning the surface of the boards with lacquer thinner prior to applying the paint. Based on this input, I waited another 24 hours, sanded the boards again, and applied a fourth coat without cleaning with lacquer thinner first. The same thing happened again. More ridges!

At this point I was so frustrated that I placed an order for another set of wood and was planning on having my buddy spray them with whatever kind of paint he thought was best. I canceled the order a few days later after thinking about how much money would be down the drain.

I did some reading online and found a website that said oil paint can take up to 30 days to cure completely. I decided to leave the boards in an unused room inside the house for 30 days and then try again. Yesterday was the 30 day mark, so I sanded and repainted one board, and it did not wrinkle up! I sanded and painted the rest of the boards, and only one spot about the size of a quarter ended up wrinkling. I can live with that at this point. This isn't a show truck, and I plan on using the bed for light hauling, but I want it to look decent. I think I will achieve that goal.

I should have used latex. After digging around in the Mar-K document archive, I did find one document that says they used latex. Oh, and by the way, the POR-15 documentation says any type of paint can be applied over it.

I've included an image from the 1968 sales brochure. That's the look I'm going for.