Special
Invisible lacquers: who has them?
THE INFLUENCE OF MATTING AGENTS WHEN TO CHOOSE BETWEEN INVISIBLE VARNISH AND MATT OIL Invisible lacquers are making great strides on various fronts. For instance, not only have more and more producers emerged, but also they have continued with research into increasingly better use capacity. They have various points for attention, including the extension of the lifespan. An interesting question to ask is how the lifespan compares to that of more glossy varnishes. To get an answer to this question and many others, we called on a specialist from the Blanchon Group.
Lifespan The first thing which we learnt was that there’s no doubt that the ratio, quality, and nature of the matting agents used to obtain an invisible exterior are vitally important. You have to consider the intensity of the matting, ease of application, beauty of the film, resistance to traffic, low maintenance, and a whole series of other things. If you use a so called ‘matting agent’ which tends to pile up on the surface of the film, an infinite number of small cracks can arise to diffuse the light and give a matt or even an ultra matt effect. However, there is a risk of this effect fading over time under the influence of intensive traffic or friction. The matting agents start to scour and ensure that the surface becomes satiny and in some cases even glossy (in the latter case it is sometimes claimed that the lacquer ‘whitens’). A permanent solution is to use matting agents spread over the entire thickness of the film to ensure a permanent matt effect. These matting agents are certainly more expensive than the substances which we first presented and it is even more complicated to achieve an ultra-matt effect. With the latter you have to consider that an excess percentage of matting agent has an adverse effect on the clarity of the coat of varnish and can cause unwanted effects. The look sometimes becomes ‘whitish’, something which doesn’t look good, particularly on dark wood sorts. Photo – Tover
If the varnish contains surface matting agents, they will in most cases be less durable than the
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