A year ago I redid the exterior entrance way to our house with some board and batten. I faced it with ply and did the battens with pine. My wife and I couldn’t decide on a colour, so several coats of good quality exterior latex went onwent on. After 3 coats I remembered that I had to seal the knots with shellac. I sanded through the paint and shellaced the knots on the battens. Then two more coats went on (we really couldn’t decide on colour). Now the knots are all showing through again as plain as day, and they look terrible. I’ve got to strip and repaint somehow, but what to use to recoat? Is there anything better than shellac? Will Oil-base paints seal the knots? Can I use Oil-base paints right over the water-base coats?
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Replies
I would use a shellac based, pigmented primer, such as BIN. About 2 coats as it comes from the can. Oil based paints won't seal in the resin, in and of them selves.
Tell us a little more about the pine battens. Did they come from construction grade lumber (ie. 2x dimension lumber), or were they from lumber sold for trim or cabinet making. The reason I ask is that it isn't uncommon for construction lumber not to be kiln dried sufficiently to "set" the resin in the knots. In that case you might want to replace the battens, since it is very hard to seal in the unset resins.
Thanks for your informative reply! I can't really remember what exactly I asked for when I ordered the batten material, except that I must have said that I wanted it to be paint grade without further work, because I just cut it to length and installed it. It would be a pain to replace the battens but it might have to happen... Then at least I could use finger-jointed knot-free trim.
Reapply shellac, it is the best stain killer. Probably the stains are worst where is sap .I usually spot shellac the knots,then shellac the entire board.This gives you an even finish, sometimes just shellac knots show shiner than the rest of the board.
mike
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