Mr Newell trigger warning - Aluminium oxide finish for flooring.

[a twig]

Typing with some trepidation just in case I cause upset but some “friends” have been raving about some sort of uv cured varnish/finish for wooden flooring that incorporates aluminium oxide and is apparently “bomb proof”.

My natural scepticism kicked in and googling seems to be a 50-50 split between companies selling it and saying it is great, and guides for how to remove it. Would be interested in thoughts from members of this parish?

 

[malcolm]

I also search 'how to remove' before I plump for something new. Gives a useful clue.

For my own floors my parquet sander will only agree to apply a modern varnish. I'll be doing my own finish. I reject varnish because any refinishing later on is going to mean getting the parquet sander back in.

 

[noj]

Found this

https://www.hunker.com/13411717/aluminum-oxide-finish-vs-polyurethane-on-wood-floors

Not filling me with confidence...

 

[Toby Newell]

Typing with some trepidation just in case I cause upset but some “friends” have been raving about some sort of uv cured varnish/finish for wooden flooring that incorporates aluminium oxide and is apparently “bomb proof”.

My natural scepticism kicked in and googling seems to be a 50-50 split between companies selling it and saying it is great, and guides for how to remove it. Would be interested in thoughts from members of this parish?

lol

 

[Toby Newell]

lol the article is written vy someone with no clue. Like zero, is all totally wrong. I cannot even begin.

Found this

https://www.hunker.com/13411717/aluminum-oxide-finish-vs-polyurethane-on-wood-floors

Not filling me with confidence...

 

[Toby Newell]

Typing with some trepidation just in case I cause upset but some “friends” have been raving about some sort of uv cured varnish/finish for wooden flooring that incorporates aluminium oxide and is apparently “bomb proof”.

My natural scepticism kicked in and googling seems to be a 50-50 split between companies selling it and saying it is great, and guides for how to remove it. Would be interested in thoughts from members of this parish?

The article below is 100% wrong written by a click baiter who knows ZERO.

Urethane = Polyurethane = Identical.

Urethane monomer is crosslinked either by oxygen or water (pre cat), a catalyst (normally isocyanate) or by UV inititiation to forrrrm... (5p if you can guess kids) Poly-urethane

No AlOx (Al2O3) isnt used in paints etc, not much, he is confusing with TiO2.

No it isn't glassy, the opposite, AlOx clouds the finish so is normally used in the range 10 to 20% sheen, up to 40% sheen.

AlOx isnt a finish, its a ceramic powder that is added to factory applied finishes to aid slip and wear resistance.

Lecol do an isocyanate cured two part water based polyurethane with added AlOx. No idea who uses it, never used it, never met anyone who used it. Costs £250 per 5 litres, so almost 2.5x cost of normal two part water based PU, like Bona Traffic HD for example but, iirc, its German DIN wear resistance test results are only +50%

Its not a new finish, been used for over 20 years, its marketing rubbish.

Pretty much all laminate, prefinished engineered floors, cheap furniture, IKEA stuff etc has been coated this way for decades now..

The substrate is put on a conveyor where it is sent under a roller (sometime curtain coat but almost always roller coat) like a litho press (if you look very very carefully at your laminate in the light you can see tide marks, like the pattern on a beach left by the waves, this microtexture is due to the surface tension of the viscous material on the roller)

Curing by mercury vapour discharge lamp normally takes from 10 to 60 seconds, it is denibbed under a belt sander, air dusted, then repeated, at least 3 coats are appied.

The most common finishes are acrylate and urethane.

They are water based, extra high solids and have phenomenal coverage rates (c. 80-200sqm p litre) making them incredibly cheap.

The cured film has excellent intercoat adhesion, is very hard, has excellent UV, chemical and solvent resistance. They can also be formulated to be flame retardant.

They are brittle however and this increases with age, they are a nightmare to strip, virtually impossible, even with DCM, they powder and chip upon sanding. Scratches tend to be deep and jagged and are almost imposible to repair.

Its a cheap, factory applied, commodity finish that aesthetically ranks as one of rhe lowest and is impossible to refinish.

Cheap cost, zero VOCs (legal mandate in EEA which is why they were invented) easy application, fast packing times means they are standard factory finish.

Some marketing ***** decided to do one, as they are wont to do at various times.

BTW UV oil is twattery, its just a UV cured polyurethane or alkyd. Most water based lacquers are either acrylate, PU or alkyd based.

FYI you think thats bad? Ever heard of 'ceramic' car finishes?

Contains no ceramic. They are polysilicone (like hair conditioner / pledge furniture polish / dashboard shiner) developed by DARPA for the US military as a water repellent to aid cleaning of windows / sensor arrays / IR lenses etc in dusty environments.

Some knobhead saw the elemental symbols Silicon and Oxygen together in the Silicone group R-SiO and confused it or purposefully created the myth that it somehow was SiO2 ie quartz.

And thus billions of you tube views and thousands of idiots telling you they are using a ceramic coating, when they are paying £100 for a little bottle of concentrated Pledge.

This is that type off bollox, only this time, some of the finishes actualky contain a few percent of Aluminium oxide dust.

Lol at Blacktail workshop on rhe youtubes. Coats his amazing black walnut mega slabs wirh Rubio Monocoat, which is an industrial pkastic finish then he polishes with silicone pledge, sorry, ceramic coating.

The truth is out there for minds that require regular exercise.

How did I do?

I just finished my month long jigsaw, thats my excuse...

The have low clarity

 

[Cassie]

Only a stab in the dark, but I’d say Mr Newell was definitely triggered

 

[Toby Newell]

oh, lol you will a little trouble avoiding it! unless you never buy any laminate / IKEA item / any flat pack item / any furniture item online or in shops that isn't bespoke. 90% have UV cured water based finishes

I blame the jigsaw.

I left for work in August... not gone home yet.

I could do one on the Wikepedia French Polishing page which is only about 98% totally incorrect...

 

[Cassie]

Steady on, too much triggering surely can’t be good for one’s constitution!

 

[a twig]

C’mon Toby, get off the fence and say what you really thing

Invaluable opinion as always, glad my BS radar hasn’t completely conked out. Will avoid - much obliged

 

[Toby Newell]

You are welcome, yeah that article was pretty laughable. I guess if you want to fool an expert, you better research your 'b roll' facts.I think rather than fill your article with innacuracies, keep it simple. Only when the level of BS is very high and the exponents general level of effort is very low do I bother. Like Osmo oil being a plastic alkyd finish containing 50% fossil fuel and hardwax from endagered plant species being marketed as natural and green. Thats like Amnesty International appointing Putin as their Director, for all his humanitarian work.

FYI I think its interesting that in the USA you can actually buy a portable on-site kit, for doing floors, its pretty mad! so obviously I researched it. I was actually looking into portable kits to refinish furniture items, they have such a system already in the auto industry.

UV catalysis is quite amazing, reduxing ypur drying times to 20 seconds is pretty rad. Its just not very practical and the finish isnt very flexible and it looks crap.

Overal its great for the environment as the finishes are 100% or almost VOC free, which is great.

 

[Toby Newell]

What maybe is more interesting is the many different forms of Aluminium oxide. (AlOx)

Transparent aloominum? (Thanks Scotty) Aluminium oxide with added BS. Adonising? Yes, that lovely blue, red, black or yellow layer on your overpriced Woodpecker square / Incra router fence is a dyed, thin layer of AlOx.

AlOx is used in making crucibles, refractory linings, specialist glasses for aerospace, prosthetic implants, passive protective coatings (in adonisation) abrasives and as a filler coating modifier (above OP) amongst others.

Sapphire, garnet, ruby, the crystal on your Patek Phillipe, Omega or Rolex, all aluminium oxide.

There are several forms of AlOx.

Traditional and typically poorly performing abrasives are made directly from unrefined garnet (a sub type of corrundum) and corrundum. Garnet fractures and dulls very quickly as it falls apart, although it has great initial bite due to its sharp grains and friable nature.

Traditional garnet paper. I remember using this as a child in our basement on my woodworking projects.



Corrundum paper used to be manufactured from the raw mineral but now generally refers to any basic AlOx abrasive. It is an outdated term as it does not differentiate from AlOx's many different forms.

Natural corrundum



Emery is a natural black form of corrundum



3M (Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company) pioneers in abrasives invented wet and dry paper.

Emery paper is often cloth backed and was developed for sanding metals..


Most basic Alox abrasives are 'blocky' they break and become rounded or block like and lose their bite quite quickly. There are different forms of basic AlOx like white, blue and brown and there is quite a large range of performance. The ubiquitous painters 'scratch' 80 grit Oakey Liberty Green (John Oakey invented modern sandpaper as a piano makers apprentice) are at the lower end and dull quite quickly. Good for sanding filler.

Oakey liberty green 'scratch' also comes in yellow...



A more advanced AlOx abrasive is called Zirconia, although more accurately it should be called ZA or Zirconia Alumina because they normally only contain around 10% of the more expensive Zirconia. High performace Zirconia Aluminas like Lägler's contain much more, possibly 20% or higher (no one will spill the beans! Looking at you Peter...)

Zirconia is harder and more friable than AlOx and this leads to cooler running and sharper cutting under pressure, it is widely used in industry to abrade metal.

ZrO2 (zirconium dioxide) is harder than AlOx, widely used for prosthetic and dental implants and in its cubic form as a diamond substitute where it is third in line behind diamond and boron nitride.

Zirconia (Zirconia Alumina) is normally blue


The most sophisticated and highest performance AlOx abrasive is called ceramic alunina or sometimes just ceramic. This is unhelpful as ceramic just means a mineral that has been sintered (pedants will note modern ceramics also include all hard, brittle crystaline solids, mostly oxides, carbides and nitrides) In the abrasive industry the word ceramic means either sintered AlOx or SiC (silicon carbide)

Manufactured AlOx is milled and graded into micro fine grains and then sintered at high temperature to fuse these together. It is then milled again and further graded for use.

This gives a strong, yet highly friable grain that micro fractures along the sinter points in a controlled manner constantly exposing a sharp cutting edge of consistant aggression. In use AlOx ceramic runs cool, stays sharp for longer and is very durable.

Normal, blocky AlOx or Zirconia grain, large irregular fracture points


Ceramic Alumina (Ceramic, Fused Alumina) grain, fine regular fracture planes



I mainly use German Lägler extra high percentage Zirconia industrial sanding discs and belts, SAIT and Swiss made SIA zirconia discs, Festool Granat and SIA ceramic alumina abrasives.

A lot of basic alumina abrasives are a waste of money. Mirka basecut for example, though SIA do their own cheap and useless product, ok for filler as it will get clogged before worn.

Lãgler Zirconia and Festool Granat ceramic are both the most expensive and yet best value abrasives you can buy (on general sale, Norton are more expensive and make excellent ZA and Ceramic abrasives but focus on the US market) because they work several times faster and last longer. Now you know.

Silicon carbide stearated paper like Sia 1748 is useful for intercoat hand sanding, as are stearated alunina papers like 3M 255P+ for machine intercoat sanding. 3M 245 is a high quality durable basic alumina for heavy sanding. At most other times a quality Zirc or Ceramic mixed abrasive will be faster, more durable and work out cheaper.

There you go. Aluminium oxide is great! A non click bait rant containing real facts gleaned from 35,000 hours of background research, not a two hour surf, errata strewn, marketing twattery inspired plage fest. Karma has been restored. I hope you learned something.

 

[RBailey]

I've recently made the switch to Zirconia based grits and its a really noticeable difference, I've been impressed.

I'm using trend brand which may not be the best ones but I have found the price / lifespan is good (5.99 for 50 pieces of 125mm pads) and worlds away from cheap alumina.

Cheers,
Richard B.

 

[Toby Newell]

I've recently made the switch to Zirconia based grits and its a really noticeable difference, I've been impressed.

I'm using trend brand which may not be the best ones but I have found the price / lifespan is good (5.99 for 50 pieces of 125mm pads) and worlds away from cheap alumina.

Cheers,
Richard B.

Trend's quality is approaching zero these days, bless them, I mean they invented the 'useful hack' market segment, now there are 1000 copies. But, 12p a sheet of zirc, thats pretty cheap, if it works it works.

lol at game changing, what? only 40 years behind the curve lol at Zirconium range, its ZirconIA actually and max 5% probably. Uses DIY speak but sounds like resin over resin bond open coat, no mention of weight, look like C weight backing, I would buy a bunch at that price, if they are selling the heavier grits for same.

But B&Q has £13.99 for 10x 125mm 40 grit, cheapest I can find is £18 for 50

Maybe you found a loss leader or incorrectly priced item, I would buy a few more at that price if you can.

FYI buy P40, 60, 80 and possibly 100. You actually dont really want to use ZA after 120 as they leave scratch patterns, from then on you want ro move to normal Alumina like 3M 255P+

Clever companies like Lägler fade out rhe percentage of Zirconia as the grits get finer, Festool take a blunter approach with rheir Granat Soft line, which presumably is Granat with less or no ceramic.

Im not sure Trend is that sophisticated.

You could also try SAIT or SIA, I use both and they are decent value.

Post the link for the £5.99 offer and we can clear them out!