Hiya,
** Should have said 3M 4000 UV.* I've used it in the past for teak decking to house joints and it "seems" fine.* Stays bright white.
3M ManufacturingÂ*| 3M United States
-- Edited by RT Firefly on Saturday 8th of January 2011 12:59:09 PM
I used 3M 4000UV to caulk my teak toe rail both at the deck and the outside.
It has failed miserably:
Makes a wet residue after rain or washing with plain water, sometimes
feeling about like freshly laid caulk
Peels off in strips, or
Falls off in chunks [segments of the caulk line, complete]
Crazes and chalks, and
perhaps others related to cleaning with water (only) which I don’t recall,
as the admiral does that.
I called the tech support desk; that guy gave me the number for the head
technical guy at 3M; every call resulted in being directed to voice mail,
however.
An extensive conversation, at long last after chasing each other around
missing each other, with 3M's head tech guy established:
My preparation (remove all old caulk, light sand in the chamfered opening I
cut into it for deeper penetration into any gaps under the toe rail, blow
out, scrub with acetone and allow to dry, tape toe rail and deck/hull) was
as good as it gets
Application was perfect (caulk, immediately tool with caulk tool, lift
tape) - I had two people helping in order to do all this while it was fresh)
Cure time and environment was appropriate.
After which, he admitted that they had had a "formulation problem" with
4000UV that they were still trying to sort out.
He said, but has walked back that offer, that he'd provide a form for me to
take to allow a merchant to be reimbursed, and that I should redo it with a
competitor's product.
A variety of emails have passed, attempting to pin him down as to what we
should do about that. He's understandably reluctant to do that, but He
wasn't specific as to what to buy, other than saying he thought Sika had a
good product for that application.
But the fact that he told me not to go back with new 4000UV, free or not,
that they were still working out kinks in the formulation, says volumes.
That I've seen exactly my complaint in many places merely confirms that I am
neither alone, nor inadequate in my use of the product. That he'd go to the
length of telling me to buy a competitive product is honorable in the
extreme, but I'm a bit surprised that he didn’t leap on the chance to have
me present a good-fer (not even a mosquito on an elephant's butt in the
scheme of things for 3M) to make the ultimate tone of this a bit sweeter
("3M Tech Support Rocks! Details at 11!)
So, when we again reach shore, we'll be digging out all that soggy or
brittle stuff, and starting over with something else. At this time, the
'something else' is under review, as not much of anything sounds good or
without problems for the application we have (sealing a fiberglass-to-teak
joint).
L8R
Skip
Morgan 461 #2
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