Tamco Paint has been working on our version now for almost a year, mainly for marine use.

Corrosion protection mechanism of the intact, damaged, and healed self-healing coatings (SHCs). Image courtesy of Zhifeng Lin and Weihua Li.

A scientific research team from Sun Yat-sen University (SYU) (Guangzhou, Guandong, China) has developed an epoxy-based coating with a thickness of about 200 microns (7.9 mils) with iron oxide black (Fe₃O₄) nanoparticles and tetradecanol that exhibited self-healing properties under solar irradiation. This self-healing coating (SHC) is able to protect underlying carbon steel substates from erosion and solves a key problem common to organic coatings: microcracks that form under different natural conditions, thus allowing water and other corrosive media to penetrate.

The study was recently published in Frontiers of Chemical Science and Engineering.

Metal materials directly exposed to air, water, or other corrosive media are prone to damage due to various physical and chemical changes, resulting in resource waste and environmental problems. A protective layer can effectively slow down the corrosion of the matrix material by isolating the metal from the environmental medium, and its compactness and corrosion resistance are two key factors for the final protective effect.

SHC is a new type of coating system with an extended life expectancy that repairs microcracks or damage to form a repairable physical barrier. Although such coatings can be applied in several ways, including external repair, adding corrosion inhibitors, or using polymer resin and thermoplastic materials, UV irradiation and high-temperature conditions are needed to include the necessary chemical reactions. Thus, SYU researchers looked to develop a SHC that could activate under milder conditions.

They found that their SHC could be heated to 70 °C (158 °F) under simulated solar irradiation due to the photothermal effect of Fe₃O₄ nanoparticles, which greatly exceed the melting point of tetradecanol at 37.6 °C (99.7 °F). Perforations and scratches caused by scalpels scraping the coating surface were repaired after being irradiated for three minutes. The coating’s wettability was also shown to increase with the addition of tetradecanol. To further confirm the performance of the SHC, the researchers conducted the scratch-heal experiment in a natural outdoor environment and achieved ideal results.

The efficiency of the SHC’s corrosion protection properties on metal substrates can be maintained above 99 percent regardless of repair. It can effectively prevent the infiltration of oxygen, water, and chloride, and shows good stability and protective performance even after immersion in a 3.5 wt% sodium chloride solution for 168 hours.

Source: EurekAlert!, www.eurekalert.org.

Bob Barney

I first heard about Amerflint while living in Florida in 1980, while attending a Dupont sales and technical training seminar in Jacksonville, Florida. The class was taught by C.K. Bundy. I was new to the paint world, having less than 6 months experience when I attended the class.  I vividly remember one student asking Mr. Bundy, "Amerflint is killing our Imron sales, what can we do to stop this?"

To be frank, I knew little about Amerflint at the time, some of my customers in Hollywood and Ft. Lauderdale were using it on all over paint jobs. Mr. Bundy replied that although a good product, it was too new to see if it could stand up to the durability of Imron.

The distributor or "jobber" I was working for moved Tammy and I to Stuart Florida to manage a Steego paint store selling Dupont.  It was here I saw just how dominate that paint had become.  I had a customer called 'Phil's Autobody' who had become allergic to isocyantes and asked me to paint an MG.   When I got there, expecting it to be Centari or Imron, he had a gallon kit of Amerflint II.  I wasn't too happy about spraying it, but I did, thinking that I should understand the stuff.

The paint was incredible.  It was very high solids. It covered basically in one coat.. I still put on 3 out of habit.  It laid down exceptionally well, and where I had put too much, causing some orange peel, within 30 minutes, it had lived out!  And that wet look was amazing!

Honestly, it was the easiest, user friendly paint I have ever sprayed.  It looked beautiful when I left. I went back to the apartment and told Tammy that I wished that I could sell the product!  Little did I know.

The next morning I went to the bodyshop before opening the store to see what it looked like. It still looked wet! I thought at first that it was. It was not, it was as hard as a rock, shining and glossing like no product I ever saw.  It was so flat, it looked like it must have been rubbed and buffed.

A short 2 years later, Steego decided to close the Stuart store, I was offered the sales manager job, if I moved back to Ft Lauderdale.  Tammy was pregnant with our second child, Victoria and I didn't want to move.  Frank Esposito who owned American Lacquers and Solvents (the company that owned AMERFLINT) drove all the way from Tampa to offer me a job.  In July 1984 I started selling the product that has proven itself over 44 years now with ease of use, and incredible gloss and DOI. 

Over the years, I sold this product to every kind of user imaginable.  Body Shops, both custom and dealership, fleet refinishers, trucking companies, railroads (every single Norfolk-Southern locomotive was painted with it for 16 years), the marine industry, aircraft painters (some of the B-17's in the movie Memphis Belle, painted by Don Whittington's JET AVIATION in Pompano Fl were painted with Amerflint.). We sold it to aircraft painters. small planes, and jets as large as L-1011's were painted in this incredible paint. Some famous people I sold this to, was Murphy's towing and paint job in West Palm Beach that painted ALL OF BURT REYNOLD'S Florida cars and trucks. Even a special 'Smokey and the Bandit' car he was given was painted in Amerflint.  

Car restoration shops used our products, the most notable one I sold to was Rick Carroll.  Rick was at the time the largest owner of Duesenberg's in the country. He had his own personal shop, run by Chuck Stevens.  Rick was tragically killed in an auto accident in the mid 90's, and his cars where sold at Sotheby's auctions for millions of dollars.  The bodies where painted in our nitrocellulose lacquer, but all the frames, and engines where painted with Amerflint!

Just two of the cars auctioned which brought millions of dollars

all of Carroll's Duesy engines were painted in Amerflint II

The Sad End. Ric's Death caused his entire collection to be sold.

I still have this auction book!

Just because your paint is so unique that it can be used on multi-million dollar cars, I also sold the same products to cement and asphalt plants! Below is a photo of the Ranger Construction asphalt plant in West Palm painted in Amerflint in 1990.  As of 2011 it had still NOT been painted.  Art Fowler, Ranger's Vice President and maintenance director could never get more than three years out of any paint he tried!  Each shutdown costs Ranger $3 million dollars in loss revenue.  Lasting 20 plus years saved the company many many millions.  This was the first of sixteen plants I sold to Ranger and Pavex (their sister company in Pompano).

Ranger's Headquarters and first of 16 Amerflint II pain jobs.

Dominion Paving (Hopewell Va) plant (this photo was taken after 6 years in service)

Even Floors!  This is Coca-Cola's Truck Service Garage!

Other notable users that I had nothing to do with their use were:

DISNEYWORLD-- Everything that was painted at the park was painted in Amerflint II.  The monorail, the railing, the boat that brought you to the park, the steam trains, the people moving trams and every ride was painted in Amerflint.  They were the company's largest single customer!   And because Amerflint is the only urethane made that can below the waterline, Disney painted all their coat bottoms with Amerflint. When they opened up MGM, they had a restaurant called 'The Paint Pot' that actually had in it an Amerflint II mixing machine!  The restaurant was a tribute to Frank Esposito, as that was the name of his wife's paint business in Cuba during the 1950's. Carowinds and Bush Gardens also used this our paint.

SEA RAY BOATS-- Used Amerflint II on all their painted boats.

Lackawanna RailRoad Engine after 31 years of service

High Impact vs. Amerflint II

Tamco began making Amerflint under the name of Duraflint II.  Duraflint 1 (now just called Duraflint) is our version of the old Dupont Imron coating, loved by thousands of painters.

In the automotive and Fleet Clear Coat labels, we called it Hi-Impact, because the resin in this product can take harsh impacts, and resists scratches. It's also very flexible. 

Today, in the clear coat line we sell HC9500  Super Fast Hi-Impact, which is a fast cure version of the High Impact.  HC9500 fully cures in 3 hours at 78F.  Dry to handle in 40 minutes.  These clears will last more than 20 years in the Florida sun.

Although Amerflint uses the same backbone resin in the former Duraflint II and standard High Impact, the product now is even more durable.  We have added nano-technology, as well as two other additives, that slows down dry time and drastically improves both ease of application and gloss..

Testing so far, shows the product passing more than 7,000 hours of UV in our own machine.  Outside testing has shown this version to last upwards to 30,000 hours before failure. That would equate to 27-30 years of direct Florida sunlight.

It is skydrol (jet aircraft hydraulic oil) resistant and passes all specifications. It is impervious to most solvents and chemicals tested so far.  It is the perfect product for Land Sea and Air.

By 2022, Tamco plans to introduce metallic colors in all of our urethane lines! 

Look for it.

Foreword by Bob Barney: Konica Minolta's Spectrophotometer's are used in paint matching formulations by some of the largest and smaller paint manufacturers in the world.  These computer "eyes" are able to detect even the smallest changes in color, which helps paint manufacture color labs to be able to more accurately match colors from their own paint lines. Here is an interesting story by Konica, of these Spectrophotometer's used in an entirely different, but still important role.

Not rendering correctly? View this email as a web page here.   Konica Minolta Sensing's CL-500A Spectrophotometer sheds light on endangered sea turtles and their nesting habits. Konica Minolta Sensing Americas was pleased to participate in the study through its use of its illuminance spectrophotometer used onsite to measure realistic color temperatures and CRI values of exterior lighting. The CL-500A provided the Florida Wildlife Commission with data truer to the realistic readings required in determining the optimal light levels needed to protect the turtles and their nesting habits. Read a case study on how Konica Minolta Sensing's CL-500A measurements contributed to the environmental and biological findings proving the effects of artificial lighting on sea turtles’ nesting habits.

Tamco Single Stage Paint is meant to be catalyzed and sprayed as is, however for the ultimate gloss and buffing ability, many choose to add CLEAR to the Single Stage.

You do not have to add clear coat to single-stage paint, as Tamco single stage 2K paints have exceptionally high gloss as is.  However, integrating clear into the color for the last coat can give you more gloss, and makes some colors easier to buff.   Unlike in 2-stage paint where the color and clear coat are separated, single-stage paint mixes up all the ingredients which are then applied at once. Therefore there is usually no need for a clear coat because the single-stage paint already has got some ingredients that will give the car the gloss you need.

Tamco actually makes five versions of single stage 2K paints. Here are the pro's and cons of each:

DURAFLINT (formerly Duraflint 1) is Tamco's version of the old green labeled Imron, that was so popular in the 70's and 80's.   Although it is very durable, and has incredible gloss, it is the least expensive of our 2K colors for two reasons.  The first is that it is an industrial resin, with a little color to it.  Resins are rated from 0-20 for color. In the picture below you see the Gardner Color Scale that most labs use to measure the clearness of resin. Most of Tamco's resin fall below 1 (the first tube on the left) and some actually are a 0.  The resin we use for Duraflint is between 2 and 3, which is still very clear for an industrial resin.  

The second reason for the lower cost is that a "kit" comes with 3/4 filled its or gallons, and the hardener fills it up. So a gallon kit of Duraflint yields 1 sprayable gallon, no reduction.   It is probably the most user friendly of all our topcoats.  The clear version of this is HC-9040.  Although it has some color, nobody with the naked eye could ever see the difference if used over our base coats.  Integrating the 9040 into the last coat of Duraflint, will gloss like the photo above! It is a much slower curing coating versus the acrylic urethanes that make up the rest of our 2 K topcoats.  That slow curing and flash times allows this product to melt in overspray, and even reflow dry sprayed layers. It's an old durable and user friendly resin that buffs easily, shines to 99% gloss and is actually superior in UV and chemical durability than our popular AG series 2K paint.  Duraflint can be made in metallics as well!

Duraflint is a direct to metal, properly prepared aluminum, galvaized and almost any surface BUT stainless steel.

AG SERIES 2K- Our most popular single stage stage 2K paint, been around for 25 years now.  It is made from the HC-4100 resin and that would be the clear that you would integrate into the last coat.  Easy to apply, a true acrylic urethane resin. Durable and is a medium to high solids color that has excellent flow, leveling and gloss retention. At 45% solids it still provides plenty of film build for the custom and collision industry. As with many of the other Tamco products, the AG is manufactured from direct to metal resins. This means paint can be applied directly over properly sanded and cleaned metal where protection from the elements is required. AG is only available in SOLID COLORS no Metallic's!

High Impact: (formerly Duraflint II)- Comes in two versions, Speed Cure (made from HC9500 Hyper cure) or HC-7677 Standard cure resins..  The speed version can only be integrated with HC-9500 clear!  That is a must! It adheres to all surfaces except stainless steel, and can be made in metallic's.  It is more durable than Duraflint or AG. Perfect for small areas to be painted, like helmets and motorcycles. 

The Standard High Impact can only be integrated with the regular High Impact clear (HC-7677). IT CAN ONLY be applied to our primers or sealers. It has no adhesion qualities like our other 2K systems, but is incredibly durable and flexible. Like the speed version, we can also make this in metallic colors.

Amer-Flint II- Our most durable paint, re-introduced after many years.

Invented by American Lacquers and Solvents in Tampa Florida in the late 70's, this is the most durable product anyone could ever use. The paint is incredible.  It is very high solids. It covers basically in one to two coats.. I still recommend 3 out of habit.  It lays down exceptionally well,  orange peel, within 30 minutes, goes away!  Honestly, it was the easiest, user friendly paint I have ever sprayed.

Over the years, I sold this product to every kind of user imaginable.  Body Shops, both custom and dealership, fleet refinishers, trucking companies, railroads (every single Norfolk-Southern locomotive was painted with it for 16 years), the marine industry, aircraft painters (some of the B-17's in the movie Memphis Belle, painted by Don Whittington's JET AVIATION in Pompano Fl were painted with Amerflint.). We sold it to aircraft painters. small planes, and jets as large as L-1011's were painted in this incredible paint. Some famous people I sold this to, was Murphy's towing and paint job in West Palm Beach that painted ALL OF BURT REYNOLD'S Florida cars and trucks. Even a special 'Smokey and the Bandit' car he was given was painted in Amerflint.  

Car restoration shops used our products, the most notable one I sold to was Rick Carroll.  Rick was at the time the largest owner of Duesenberg's in the country. He had his own personal shop, run by Chuck Stevens.  Rick was tragically killed in an auto accident in the mid 90's, and his cars where sold at Sotheby's auctions for millions of dollars.  The bodies where painted in our nitrocellulose lacquer, but all the frames, and engines where painted with Amerflint! 

Amerflint II is skydrol resistant and is the only urethane that can be applied BELOW the waterline.  It also can be made in metallics and must be applied over our primers or sealers.

Tamco trademarked the Amerflint II product last year and will start full production in July.

In summary, adding clear to the last coat of Tamco's 2K lines helps with buffing, ads durability and gloss!

We have been working on a tintable version of forever seal now for several months.  Because we use a unique 1K resin system, I realized that only a 1K product could be used to tint it. 2K urethane's could not be used because of the need to then add a hardener, which is not compatible with the resin.  

Our base coat is truly 1K, an although it has 8% functional resin (that just means that we add an acrylic urethane resin which will bond with iso hardener), the product might be compatible, without losing any of the properties of Foreverseal.  

Also, our base coats are the highest pigment solids in the industry.  Our colors cover in 2-3 coats when reduced 1:1...  

We took a red (normally poor hiding in other base coats) and mixed it 4 parts of CLEAR Foreverseal to only 1 Part unreduced base coat.  Then we mixed that 4:1 with HR-1370 reducer and sprayed it.  As you will see in the video, it worked great!   Smooth as silk.   Just a little more testing and now you will be able to have exact match sealers to your paint line!

REMEMBER: 

ForeverCoat is a Ready To Spray/Direct To Metal is an auto/Fleet & Industrial Sealer that has exceptionally good filling properties and provides good color holdout and fast topcoat times.  It can be applied directly over properly prepared steel, galvanized, aluminum, fiberglass, SMC, base-coat, old lacquer, old cured enamel, and old polyurethane.  The advantage of this sealer is that there is NO pot-life issues, and NO RECOAT period to worry about.  It’s FOREVER recoat-able without sanding!

Yet it sands like butter if you need to!

To Buy    Shop HERE

By Pat Dry

Technical Service Director of Tamco Paint/Tamco Finishes

The one most important product anyone should have available in their shops at all times is Tamco's TOP DAWG adhesion promoter! HP-2010 Top Dawg is a multi-use adhesion promoter that is water-clear in color with no pink hue like many other on the market. In the normal refinish industry this product can be used on raw plastics such as bumpers before applying primers or top coats. Another use is in door jambs. Once properly cleaned our adhesion promoter can be sprayed and topcoated in jambs without sanding or used on any other hard to reach ares without the risk of delamination.  In the custom side of painting HP-2010 has a wide variety of uses. It can be applied directly to metal with no need for sanding. Polished aluminum looks amazing but not long after it will begin to lose its luster. Our adhesion promoter can be applied directly on top of polished aluminum and then clearcoated for a lifelong durable shine. Since it dries clear it will not add any discoloration. Custom painters often find that they have exceeded the recoat window for the next coat of paint. All you have to do is apply HP-2010 and can start back on your work after a short flash time without having to sand and ruin what you've already done. Tamco HP-2010 is a must have for the collision, restoration or custom paint world.

Here is a list of all of the advantages of this unique product that you will not find anywhere else:

1. Ready to Spray- NO REDUCTION
2. Spray very thin dust coats!  It should be sprayed so thin that it should flash off in seconds!  NO WET COATS!!!!   Wet coats = failure of this product
3. It's Direct to all cleaned plastics yes, like automotive bumpers, but it is also direct to metals!
4. Great for cut-thru's to prevent lifting.  Just dust a little Top Dawg over the cut-thru, and you can resume painting without fear of lifting.
5. Stackable: Multiple thin coats will build a film that can bridge a re-coat lift issue.  Just 2-3 dust coats is all that is needed!   Allow it to sit 20 minutes.  It will powder when dry sanded with 600.
6. Forever pot life!  No worry about it getting hard if you keep in a tightly sealed container.... Unsealed, the solvent will evaporate and it will thicken.
7. Great for added adhesion when using panel bond or two part plastic repair products.

HP-TOP DAWG is really the TOP DOG of adhesion promotors!   

The differences between automotive base-coat paints

Yes, there is a difference between the base coat products that you can choose when refinishing a car, or anything that is painted. Simply put, as base coat color is a lacquer paint! Really. Most are familiar with Nitrocellulose and Acrylic lacquers, but a third type is called a CAB lacquer. The flaw in a nitro or acrylic lacquer is that they have no good resistance to solvent. When applying one of these two lacquers, then clear-coating them with a high grade urethane clear coat, the solvents in the clear coats will remelt the lacquer, which when dries will have no integrated adhesion to the clear-thus peeling happens. The Europeans long ago discovered that another form of lacquer used in the furniture industry had great solvent resistance, and urethane clears would not peel off! This third form of lacquer is called Cellulose Acetate Butyrate (CAB).

The only manufacturer of this resin is Eastman. Eastman CAB's are based on cellulose, one of the most abundant natural renewable resources, from trees harvested from sustainably managed forests. Every paint company in the world uses CAB from Eastman to make base coat paint. Their are different types of CAB's and most companies highly protect which version they use.

Early Automotive Coatings Chemistries: From Alkyds to Acrylic Lacquers

The first automotive paints were Nitrocellulose paint.  It was highly productive, but the final coating required polishing to achieve high gloss. Paint chemists in the 1930s wondered if somehow they could find a binder system for paint that provided both productivity and the inherently better appearance of a natural oil resin. What resulted from this work was the development of the first alkyd paint system. This was the first “polymer” made for coatings, as it was synthesized using three monomers: phthalic anhydride, glycerol, and linoleic acid.

It was not until the 1950s that the next major automotive coatings advance occurred: the use of thermoplastic acrylic lacquers. By this time in American society, the automobile was no longer just a means of transportation; cars had now become a personal showpiece that owners wanted to show off to their friends. That meant that the coatings had to look better and accentuate the new curved styling body designs of the times. Rohm and Haas Co. had developed a new synthetic polymer as a glass replacement based on poly methyl methacrylate, and the coatings industry investigated whether that technology could be used in coatings. 

As previously discussed, thermoplastic acrylic lacquer automotive coatings, given their excellent appearance, were the major automotive topcoat used in the 1950-70s. However, these lacquer topcoats did have one significant drawback: they had weak exterior durability. After about one to two years’ exposure, the coatings would begin to degrade, and aggressive waxing was needed to “bring back the shine” of these systems. By the 1980s, the automotive manufacturers were requesting better durability for automotive topcoats, as consumers were now expecting their cars to last at least five years, and they wanted the car to continue to look like it did when they first saw it in the showroom. At the same time, the Environmental Protection Agency began to promulgate new volatile organic compound (VOC) regulations that limited the amount of solvent that an automotive facility could emit into the atmosphere. The high VOC content and weak durability of acrylic lacquer coatings were no longer acceptable in the automotive marketplace.

So how did the automotive coatings formulators achieve higher solids, better durability, while even improving the appearance of the coating? The answer is the next step change advance that occurred in automotive coatings: base coat plus clear coat urethane topcoat technology.

Most two-stage base coat's have no strength and depends on the clear coat for gloss, durability, and protection from the elements. The window between coats is very forgiving, as the reducer used in the base coat has the ability to soften the previous layer to obtain a chemical bond. This means better adhesion between coats and less chance for delamitation problems over time.

CAB converted Coatings Chemistries:

Any paint can be converted by a CAB into a base coat. I remember back in the 1980's we turned our Amerflint II into a base-coat. The shop bought a converter, that was mixed 1:1 with the Amerflint II color. Because Amerflint was 100% acrylic urethane, the painter needed to add isocyanate hardener (1 pint to 1 gallon) before clearing with the Amerflint clear. This was and is the most durable base coat that can be made. However, the drawbacks doomed the product. One was it dried to slow. One had to wait 1 hour before clearing. The other was the mixed base got hard!

A second way was to make the base coat out of a blend of enamel and CAB. MOST Base coats today use this technology. You do not use hardeners in the base coat and the base never gets hard—i:e- You can use it over and over. The largest downside of this technology is eventually the clear will peel after several years of extreme UV exposure. This isn't a problem in Maine or Germany, but it is in Florida!

A third version of base coat is what we employ at Tamco. I believe, PPG invented this technology, or at least this is what they told me back in the 90's when I sold the product and went to their lab in Allison Park, Pa. This revolutionary technology is the closet to the Amerflint base coat one. We take a CAB and mix it with an acrylic urethane resin (the same resin found in 2104, 4100, 2100, etc) but at a low enough percentage that it does not need a hardener!

This unique formulation, then draws the hardener out of the clear coat and bonds with the acrylic resin in the base coat giving perfect inter-coat adhesion! The downside is that you must use a clear coat the is drastically over catalyzed, if not, the clear itself will fail. Most companies, especially the so-called generic companies use a 1-1.05 paint to hardener ratio. That simply means they over catalyze by 5%. This is not enough hardener for Tamco base coats and using such clears will cause a failure! Tamco over-catalyzes by at least 20% (the exact amount is a secret) saw that perfect ratios are achieved to make paint job last for many years.

NOTE: Basecoat activation may be necessary in cases, such as high film builds (i.e. more than four coats), commercial vehicles, motorbikes, or wheel painting where a higher impact resistance is necessary. This applies to some Tamco custom finishes such as candies, candy pearls, as well as other paint procedures requiring many extra coats over recommendations..

Clear Coats- THE KEY TO DURABILITY:

Three key elements contribute to a clear coat’s durability: UV absorbers, the use of 100% acrylic polyurethane resins and film build. UV additives absorb damaging ultraviolet rays, much like sun blocker for your skin. However, UV protectants cannot do the job alone in ensuring durability. The choice of the resin is key to long term durability. As many, if not most paint manufactures have started to add enamels to the clear coats as a cost saving and “user friendly” reasons, causing a loss in durability – Tamco has not! We use 100% acrylic polyurethane resins in our clears (except Duraflint).

The last key to durability resides in you, the painter. A final film build in the range of 2-2.5 mils is most commonly recommended. Whether using Tamco premium clear coats, a film build below 2 mils will decrease durability. Anything over 5-7 mils can cause cracking.

When you choose to use Tamco Products, you will find the best technology available at any price -- but for a reasonable price.  I personally guaranty that I will NEVER cut quality to keep prices low.  Yes, we will have reasonable price increases especially in these hard times, but we will always be the best bang for your buck!

Bob Barney