Several months ago in this column I mentioned that the Seashore Trolley Museum has some very old cars with original paint and asked for suggestions on how to stabilize it to bind the flakes and prevent further flaking in the future. Among the suggestions offered was to use a water-base varnish. We have experimented with two such products, Zip-Guard by Star Bronze, a water-based Urethane, and Benwood Stays Clear by Benjamin Moore & Co., acrylic polyurethane. Both of them do indeed seem to bind the paint flakes without any apparent discoloration or dissolving. Has anyone had long-term experience with these or similar products in this situation? Should additional coats be applied after a year or several years? Would you recommend this procedure or some other? Thanks.

RJReich@aol.com

I am glad to hear this worked. I think that this will need regular monitoring. Assuming the car is now indoors and protected from UV light which would quickly break either product down, the biggest problem would be continued failure of the substrate.

In our case we were consolidating the flaking layers so we could do paint and lettering research, but that material in now encapsulated under two coats of primer and three of dark green, seems to be holding up well, 8 years after we varnished the original paint.

Randy Hees

hees@ix.netcom.com