Repairing carnauba wax finish.. Help!

[Vandalae]

Help please! I am a decorative artist (faux finisher) in the States and I have offered my client dark red walls with a dark brown glaze. ( the paint and glaze are both water based.) The paint was sprayed on two weeks prior to my applying the glaze. The glaze was applied very thinly and manipulated a lot so was dry to the touch within hours.

One week later I applied Liberon carnauba wax. On the crown moulding and small areas it is beautiful. I have applied the wax to three out of five large panels. Where I have waxed the large panels there are unsightly streaks. How do I correct this short of removing the wax, finish, and paint to start all over? Shall I continue to wax the additional panels or stop in my tracks?

I realize now that perhaps I should have topcoated the faux finish before applying the wax but this is no longer an option.
Will multiple applications improve the appearance or preserve the streaks for eternity?
And if so, how often can I apply the wax? I have been advised every 45 minutes but have read on this website to let several days or a week go by before reapplying.

Can my walls be saved? I anxiously look forward to your advice. Thank you.

 

[LadyArowana]

I'm sorry I can't help with an answer, but I am bumping your post up ( new members have to be moderated and entries get lost as "old" ).

My guess is that there has been a bad reaction between paint and wax, pictures would help us to see exactly what you are talking about though.

 

[davidbrac]

never seen this but was wondering if you know if its the polish or the paint that is cloudy? try buffing with an electrical buffer or buffing wheel on a drill and see what happens. But is sounds as if its remove and start again

 

[plasticpigeon]

This sounds very specialist. Has the wax picked up the glaze underneath and made that streaky? Could it be that the water based glaze wasn't stuck particularly well to the dark red and has moved around a bit when the wax was applied? It doesn't sound to me like it can be rectified without doing it again. Your suggestion of clear coating the base and glaze before waxing sounds very logical. Do you have photos?

 

[Penners]

My qualifications for commenting on this are close to zero. The only thing that occurs to me is that, when I used to spray lacquer finishes on to furniture, times of exceptionally high humidity could be troublesome. The lacquer would occasionally "bloom" - that is, it would develop cloudy streaks.

I once managed to rescue mild bloom by rubbing it with very fine wire wool and a beeswax/turpentine polish. However, the solution was usually (sorry to say) sanding off the lacquer and starting again.

However, I must emphasise that your problem may be entirely unrelated to what I have described.

 

[Vandalae]

I don't see how to post pics.
When I returned to job site yesterday I realized that finish isn't so much cloudy as it is streaky. You can see the streaks of my application. Plus, I polished with pressure for high shine. The light in the room highlights the uneven streaks.
I think the problem is in my wax application and not the finish below. But how to fix ?

I contined to work yesterday in small areas removing wax immediately and getting great results. I used a car buffer ( without pressure) to make sure distribution was even, then hand polished.
I still have three large panels to do. Shall I apply the wax to small sections and polish rather than applying to the whole panel as I did before? Is that the correct ?

And then back to the dreadful streaky panels... Will one or more additional coats even out the wax or exacerbate the problem? ...... I'm thinking perhaps I try this before I give up and post questions on wax removal.

Thank you

 

[davidbrac]

I think you are in the reams of try and see, without photos we are fumbling in the dark. Maybe you need to ask the questions in a forum that specialises in faux finishes, which l believe there are a few. l found this one via google http://www.fauxforum.com

If l was in the trial and error on this l would try buffing with a soft hair brush like the Chestnut's Drill Polishing Brush or similar

 

[Toby Newell]

Hi Vandalae

I am a bit of a coatings expert. I would advise stopping.

I would not want to teach my grandmother to suck eggs so to speak as I am sure as a decorative artist you are aware of the basic principle of coat compatibility and the barrier rule.

Basically, as I am sure you know, any applied coating must be compatible with the previous substrate or layer. Some finishes are irreversible (e.g. acid catalysed cellulose finishes) and these are more forgiving and less prone to chemical attack, then you have reversible coatings (e.g. shellac french polish) these coatings can be softened via solvent and are prone to attack by a subsequently applied layer which contains the same or similar solvent as their own.

Assuming you have applied enough wax and buffed it correctly, the streaking has most probably been caused by the reaction of the solvent in your carnauba wax and the underlying paint coating either in your glaze or the base coat. Carnauba wax is a resin and has to be made up into a wax paste so whoever did this would have used a naphtha-based solvent like pure gum turpentine or white spirit. If you bought the wax made up e.g Liberon Black Bison wax, then it may also contain other stronger aromatic benzine like hydrocarbons which aid drying, any of these can soften your glaze coat and cause it to streak.

When one gets a reaction, putting more of the reacting agent on is not the answer! Maybe try and remove the wax via warm detergent solution if this will not damage the glaze. Maybe alcohol (IPA or meths) will remove and even up the wax and damage the glaze less than the naphtha-based solvent in the wax, trial and error.

If you can remove most of the wax, maybe you can even out any streaking with ultra fine wire wool (0000) grade and then overcoat the whole area with a gentler barrier seal, e.g. a water based one.

Try on a small area, if you are not 100% happy then biting the bullet and starting again may be the answer, like many things in applied coatings it is sometimes a matter of trial and error and these mistakes, although painful are often required to learn what one can and cannot do.

Best wishes

Toby

PS Wax takes several weeks to fully dry (if not months) so the longer you leave it the greater the build and the more even the sheen. You can apply additional coats almost instantly but the sooner you do so the more you will just soften and smear the previous coat. When undertaking waxing as a commercial endeavour rather than a hobby time scales necessarily get reduced, whilst leaving a week in-between coats would be optimum, leaving a day or two should be fine, especially if the area in question is quite cold.