To understand what paitns do it is helpful to know how paints are made and why they are made the way they are.

This information is drawn form Tony Clegg's excellent book'How to paint your boat' an invaluable work of reference.

Paint is made up of a pigment - for colour and a binder called a resin to bind the pigment in and too the surface.

They occur as conventional resisns (single packs) or twocomponent epoxies( two pack paints)

Oleoresins - The first paints were made from natural drying oils and are known as oleoresins. Slow drying and not very good mechanical and chemical properties.

These led to

Alkyds - when oleoresins were mixed with some alcohols their mechanical and chemical properties.were much improved - these produce the majority of varnishes and pints from the 1950's - sometimes refered to as 'oil based'. The alkyd is derived from acid and alcohol. they dried faster better gloss and improved durability. These provided the backbone of yacht coatings and do to this day. They are reasonably long lasting, with a good gloss finish and are flexible enough for tradionally built oats. Sometimes they have UV inhibitors added to improve gloss retention.

These led to

Urethane-modified Alkyds -they incorporated with isocyanate monoomers (All polyurethane products contain isocyanates). This produced better hardness and abrasion resistance. with better resitance to chemicals although in some cases it led to a quicker loss of long term gloss retention.

Urethane Oils where they add a vegetable oil rather than an alkyd resin were also developed , very tough with good resistance to chemicals and water. Used in primers and some topcoats but gloss retention is poor when outside and they dry to fast for trying to paint large areas.

Which led us to Silicone -modified alkyds such as International Toplac and Epifanes Nautiforte, the finsih and gloss rivals that of two component polyurethanes but do not match their abrasion resistance. You can not make clear coatings with this approach.

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We take this information from the maufacturers websites and update on an as and when basis.

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