New Permanent Maso Floor

[Scott Gerwitz]

We are replacing our stage floor with new double tempered Masonite.

What process have ya’ll found to work best?

I don’t want to use shellac- the labor is students- and they are not respirator fit tested.

I wonder if using a porch and floor paint as the primer would be better than a regular primer. My Sherwin Williams rep thinks we are all crazy that we use regular primers on our floors.

And I will paint both sides of the maso before installed.

Thanks

Scott

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[woodenkiwi]

Big ol’ can of worms here. A few years ago, in order to meet CARB II requirements, hardboard manufacturers reduced the amount of resin in the slurry used to make hardboard (masonite), and in order to meet the tempering requirements, they press the boards under much more pressure than before. The result is that the outer layer of the board is MUCH tougher than the internal layers. Anyone with a relatively new floor will tell you that any time you pull up tape, it pulls the paint off the floor. Actually what is happening is the tape is bonding to the paint and the paint is bonding to the board, but the internal bonds in the floor panel are what fails. Ultimately, once you get enough coats of paint on it, you’re good to go, but in the meantime, you have trouble. We do a lot of floors, so have figured out that if you prime with an oil based primer and then coat the floor with 2 coats of an alkyd urethane floor paint, the weakest bond is between the oil primer and the latex top coat. It might work with a glossy waterborne poly instead of the oil, but I haven’t tried that (I just know it’s a female dog to cover glossy sealed floors, so that might work).

Our go to paint here is a porch/floor Alkyd called California AllFlor, but that is a regional New England brand. We buy about 60 gallons of it a year.

Good luck

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