Summary

Why do some surface-tolerant mastic epoxies work so well in so many different services? Paul Atzemis and Dan Baribault deconstruct Carbomastic 15, explaining why its resin technology and added pigmentation combine to make it one of the industry’s best performers. And, Dan imagines a walk along the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway.

Timestamps

Click to follow along with the transcript:

• 00:00 – Introduction
• 02:19 – How mastic coatings developed
• 04:39 – Length of carbon chains influence application characteristics
• 07:29 – Introduction and characteristics of aluminum pigmentation
• 13:39 – Galvanic protective effects
• 15:29 – Aluminum pigmentation effect of chalking of epoxy
• 17:20 – What owners/specifiers need to know
• 19:15 – The four questions

Transcript

Introduction

Toby Wall: Everyone has a sauce that they put on everything. Doesn't matter what the food is. For me, that was Country Bob's All Purpose Sauce. What about in the world of coatings? Is there such a thing as an all purpose sauce? A product type that does really well almost anywhere that you apply it? And the answer is yes.

Well, we're really excited on this episode of The Red Bucket to have not one returning champion, but two. So this discussion on Carbomastic 15 and surface tolerant mastic epoxies, not only are we welcoming Paul Atzemis to the room here, but also you may remember from the Carboline Technical Service Podcast, Dan Baribault.

Dan is Senior Technical Service Engineer at Carboline and in his 35 years with the company, he has done pretty much everything and been pretty much everywhere.

Dan, welcome. Thanks for being here.

Paul Artemis: I think honestly, as we're, as we're talking about this today, um, product that we're talking about may be the only thing that outdates you.

Dan Baribault: It does. I remember my first experience with Carbomastic 15, by the way. You want me to expound upon that?

Toby: Well, we've said the name of it, and so, uh, the, the title of the episode, at least if I've, as I've conceived it on the papers in front of us, is deconstructing Carbomastic 15. And so I want to start that deconstruction. Uh, the word mastic, you can go find out what that means all over the internet. What do we mean here? What is mastic, Paul?

How mastic coatings developed

Paul: So basically, as we look back into the history of, of how, you know, coatings were developed, different coatings over time, there was a long time period where coatings maybe were finicky, it didn't stick, there was a lot of, uh, field chemistry that had to be done. A lot of the first ones were not in the bucket ready to be used.

The painter had to have a level of skill to know what, how much thinner do I want to add? They used to do their own field tinting. You know, they would carry out their own little bucket of, of tints that they would do. Back in that kind of a time, paints were much more categorized by what were you doing with it.

And that's really where the phrase mastic kind of came to be. They were the ones that stuck well. It required less surface prep. It required less attention to details. They were more surface tolerant and they were less stress on anything that you were going over.

So if you had a little bit of flash rust there or an existing coating, they were less prone to pull it off. And that's really where this idea came from. And then as we got into epoxies, which traditionally put a lot of stress on the, uh, whatever the existing system is, whether you're overcoating it, or you're working on some edges, doing some touch up.

Epoxies, when they cure, they shrink up, they put a lot of stress on whatever's there. Mastics and epoxy mastics do that severely, which is why something like Carbomastic 15, which has a low stress, was really unique in the market when it, when it came to be. So that really was the claim to fame kind of as Carbomastic 15 was starting. Is that what you saw, Dan?

And, you know, let me, let me go a little bit into, I know the phrase you use, we use it a lot, is long oil, short oil, or long chain, short chain. And really what we're referring to is the backbone that's in the resin system of what we're using, you know, we're talking about organic coatings. Organic coatings being made of carbon.

In this world, our carbon chains are what make up, that's what makes everything work in our, in our industry. As opposed to the inorganic, which are your things like your inorganic zincs. There's some other ethyl silicate technologies, which I'm sure we're going to talk about on another episode, probably in the not too distant future.

Length of carbon chains influence application characteristics

But as we talk about those, those don't have a foundation of the carbon chain backbone. So when we're looking at those, there's all kinds of different lengths. And each length has a different set of pros and cons for what they do. The long oils, man, today's painting world, they hate long oils, because they're slow.

Dan: In a shop, very slow.

Paul: Yep, you're talking about, still a, a paint spec that's out there. The long oils, it's weeks before they're dry to touch, dry to handle. Where you can still push on them, they're still malleable. And they're meant to flow over that whole time period. So that's an extremely long chain.

When you look at your traditional alkyd coatings, you know, the slow-dry ones had longer chains than the fast-dry ones. Now, when you do that, you're the faster it dries, the more stress it puts on the system. So those long chains are what helped give you that low stress that you're putting on a system.

That is Carbomastic 15 has a longer chain on it than the majority of the epoxies that you see in this kind of, uh, of an environment.

Dan: So, in addition to, uh, let's call it, uh, you know, all the name of a mastic, you know, that's surface tolerant. When we say surface tolerant, we're talking about a coating that can adhere tenaciously well to something other than an abrasive blasting.

Toby: We're not using tree resin here, are we? Mastic comes from a, the mastic tree. This is, this is a little more advanced than that, maybe?

Paul: Yes, that is the similar, we don't use it anymore, but that is probably deeply rooted. See that? Yeah. Like bring it all the way around. I can do that too. Deeply rooted in the, in the foundation of where that phrase came from, because honestly, you know, we're looking at things, you know, mastic, you think of things like masking tape and, and tapes and adhesives and that kind of stuff.

So yes, a lot of those do have a foundation in trees and saps and root kind of things. So. There probably is a lot there, but no, we don't use trees. Although I think there's probably some groups that would absolutely love it if we were actually using naturally grown products instead of the crude oil that this all comes from.

Toby: I wonder if the agricultural lobby on the Greek island of Chios would be happy with that or not because, you Paul, I did do the research and that's where most of the tree resin mastic comes from. And I understand now that we're not using any of that, but that's where it comes from.

Paul: And you know, it doesn't surprise me that that's the part of the world that that phrase came from as well. You know, the, a lot of what we do, the ancient Greek and Roman cultures, I prefer the Greek culture, you know, uh, as the foundation of a lot of these things and, and the ideas of how did they get what they use and how did they get it to last?

Introduction and characteristics of aluminum pigmentation

Dan: Carbomastic 15 was developed by Carboline, uh, originally with a polyamide epoxy resin. And that old original polyamide epoxy version of Carbomastic 15 actually bronzed as it weathered.

Paul: So I think that kind of brings us as a natural, uh, segue into the secondary part and possibly the most functional part of Carbomastic 15 for its just such extreme durability is that aluminum flake. This is an aluminum-flake filled epoxy mastic. So why don't you tell us a little bit about the aluminum, Dan.

Dan: So the aluminum pigmentation in Carbomastic 15 was, uh, noted as a lamellar type of...

Paul: Yep.

Dan: ...aluminum rather than, circular, which is a roundish tube.

Paul: Those have a tendency to be more round round.

Dan: Yep. Right. Right. But the, uh, lamellar, uh, obviously is you think of as more like plates. You know, little micro plates, many plates that basically will during application form a l labyrinth that's like a multi-story building. Stacking or whatnot of the lamellar, uh, aluminum pigmentation would give you fantastic barrier properties. And quite low, uh, water vapor transmission or permeability.

Paul: Let me jump back in a little bit to the, uh, description of the lamellar plates and the options of how you have aluminum that you can put in to different types of coatings. And one thing that I want you to envision is, think about, let's say, a case or a bucket filled with oranges, golf balls, you know, something, something round.

And you can, you can drop water in, and it makes its way fairly quickly to the, to the bottom, and it's because it's got, although curvy, it's a fairly straightforward path that it takes to get down there. Or you, you know, we've all seen a brick building, and you know how, if you've got even a halfway decent mason who helped, you know, do all your designing and your work, the joints, they're always staggered. Now, take that to the next level, and let's say it's more like these, uh, stone walls, where some of them are two or three times longer than other ones. So you may have one that's, let's, let's keep with an orange size scale. Maybe we have one that's two inches long. Right next to it, there's one that's seven inches long.

And underneath that, in between that gap, there's a four inch wide one. So the water, as it's trying to make its way through a coating, because if you're a long time listener, remember, everything is porous. Water will find its way through everything. So what you try to do in these coatings is make it as difficult as possible, or as slow as your moisture, your liquid, whatever it is that's attacking, as slow as it can to get through, and that helps prevent, uh, contact with your substrate.

When these plates are big and flat, and of different sizes, it helps to create such an obstacle for the water to get through that it's nearly impossible, not impossible, nearly, especially when you compare it to what you traditionally would see in an aluminum pigmented one, where they look great, they've still got an aluminum color, you can have a lot of the same effects, but they don't have that same moisture vapor barrier.

So if you've ever seen, um, somebody who's done some painting and they've done it with an aluminum pigmented or even a bronze pigmented, you can tell a lot about the type of pigment that's in it just by how it looks when they finish it. And the more roller marks you see, or the more spray patterns you see, has a, it has a good indication as to the size of the flake and the type of the flake that's Because the bigger they are, or the flatter they are, the more they're going to have a tendency to reflect whatever that application method was. So if you think about rolling a wall, and you go up one time and down another time, that's going to make those flakes lay down differently in each pattern. Same way with a spray gun. If you've got your hand and you're going to the left, it's going to make it look a little different than when you've got it and you go to the right.

So you've got to have a painter who understands what it is that they're using to make it look uniform. And it comes down to a lot of finishing it. You will only pull the trigger when you go in the same direction every time, or you will always do a finish roll of one direction to try to make it more uniform.

If you've got all small spherical pigment style aluminum, that's going to be less of an effect and a much less skilled painter can make it look acceptable when you get these bigger flake products like Carbomastic 15, all of those barrier properties, you need something that's going to be laid out to look the same, or, you know, maybe you're going for something where you're doing some touch up on galvanizing or something, and you want it to have that mottled and different look. And in that case, it doesn't matter. But if you're trying to get a uniform outside of a tank, you want it all to look as uniform as possible, that's something to take consideration with. And so when you see somebody who's done it and you look at it and you're like, well, that looks terrible.

It might not be anything to do with the paint. It's a technique, but you've put on a fantastic paint.

Toby: I was envisioning just for the layman out there, and that certainly applies to me, a lawnmower with a striper bar, and you go back and forth on your grass.

It gives you that look, dark green, light green, dark green, light green, because of which direction the mower was traveling in, in relation to where you are standing. Is that basically what you're saying there, Paul, with how it, how it appears?

Paul: Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying is it's, that is what you see. So if you think about your blades of grass, that's your aluminum flake that's in it. And you see it much more in a long blade grass than you do in the short, you know, you don't see it as much on a putting green as you do in the fairway. And it's that same, same thought.

Galvanic protective effects

Toby: You used the word, uh, patina earlier, Dan, and as a student of the galvanic table, I'm wondering, are we getting cathodic protection out of this? Because aluminum is sitting nearer the zinc end of that spectrum.

Dan: Which you're referring to, obviously, is galvanic series if you, uh, have an aluminum, filled product in contact with carbon steel, wouldn't the aluminum act like the anode?

Well, the, um, what we see in Carbomastic 15 is that the effect, as far as a galvanic protective effect, is not as great as that of a, a, say, an inorganic zinc.

Paul: And when we look at the galvanic protection that you, you can even get that in organic zincs. You can get galvanic protection to some degree. It is not as efficient in organic zincs as it is inorganic. And part of it being how much resin is there. And in those products, we're looking at 81 to 85 percent zinc in the film in those products. And a product like an aluminum filled mastic, like Carbomastic 15, it's much lower.

We're, we're looking at depending on how you weigh it and how you put it in, you know, seven to low teens kind of percent. Um, so it's not nearly enough to actually be able to create that continuity all the way through. The mica that's added to it is able to help really fill in all the blanks that is in between those lamellar plates. They get filled in by a much smaller particle now, and that's what creates additional layers of barriers. So you have different sizes, different shapes, barrier on barrier, which is really what gives us the moisture vapor resistance that we get with it.

Aluminum pigmentation effect of chalking of epoxy

Dan: The aluminum pigmentation in that product does help slow down the chalking effect in an exterior weathering situation. And chalking of epoxies and epoxy mastics is common to any vendor's formulation in direct UV or ultraviolet sunlight exposure.

Paul: Because really what we see is, you'll see that little erosion of the epoxy that's on top of the aluminum, which reveals the aluminum, and then that process virtually stops.

Because the aluminum doesn't break down and erode like the epoxy resin does. It, you know, it forms its own salt, which that's where we get that little let's call it the patina, the patina that's on it is the aluminum that's showing through that is aluminum weathering, which does not weather the same way that the epoxy resin does.

Dan: And in my experience, the only way you could really accelerate that deterioration, is to present it a highly, uh, caustic or alkaline environment or a highly acidic environment that could attack the aluminum itself.

Paul: That's a, that's a great point. That is one of the, let's call it, we can call it a weakness when you get it. This is a metal, it is a reactive metal. And so they don't like extremes on the pH scale, whether it's highly caustic or highly acidic. They like to be more in that neutral range. Let's call it, you know, maybe not lower than four or five, probably five to be safe and upwards, you know, nine is safe, 10 you're starting to get into a risky zone and the primary reason, you know, we go back to that galvanic, uh, series.

This is pretty active. So if you have something up there, that's, that's willing to exchange electrons with it, this is going to readily start exchanging. And so you want to avoid that. But so you want to stay off of the extremes of the, of the pH scale.

What owners/specifiers need to know

Toby: So we've run through a lot of what we would say the benefits are of Carbomastic 15. We've just admitted to one of its weaknesses. This is the sort of thinking that I think any well intending potential buyer will be doing, maybe, if they understand it. And so I wanted to get to, how should somebody assess.

The choice between something like Carbomastic 15 and some other mastic that is advertised as containing aluminum, given what we said a few minutes ago, where not all aluminums are created equally, or the aluminums that we put into paint are not shaped the same.

Paul: So I think the shortest answer for that is, tell them to call Carboline Tech Service and we'll tell them what to do.

So, and, and I guess when we're looking at other mastic coatings and other aluminum mastic coatings, we have other aluminum mastics that we have, you know, the sister product of, of Carbomastic 615. It is a faster-drying and it has probably the, the biggest added feature that it has.

Is that you can put it on to wet substrates. So like when you have, uh, damp or sweating pipes, and you're trying to, you know, put a coating onto a pipe, you can't turn it off to adjust the conditions, and you just have condensation forming, you can apply 615 to that. It's a different aluminum that's in it.

And that aluminum allows for the migration when it's wet, of the water to get through the coating. You can't spray it, you have to back roll it at least. Because you want to push that water to come through the coating to the surface. Where a product like Carbomastic 15 does not allow that to happen as well.

Toby: I think we should hit pause right here, because there's a lot of ground yet to cover, and covering it across two episodes might be the merciful thing to do.

The four questions

So we'll pick this back up next time. But we do have a very important part of the show called the four questions. That part we're not going to skip. Dan, you're up. You've seen it all. You've been everywhere. So, I wonder what has been the strangest coating inspection that you've ever been on.

Dan: I wouldn't call it a failure, but I remember, uh, one time being called to, uh, he said, Hey, we painted our, our, our bolted steel, uh, drilling mud tanks, and we're overcoating these bolted steel tanks with your Carboline system. We applied your Rustbond Penetrating Sealer, you know, it adheres, you know, to galvanizing that's clean, right? He said, "we applied the coating and then the damn love bugs came and set."

So that in the, in the Rustbond, and I guess they liked it and said, "well, how do we remove all these love bugs out of the dry film? What do we have to do?" I said, "well, you're going to have to scrape every square inch of these tanks or take the coating off."

Paul: Yeah, if you, if you've never been in the South during love bug season, and you've not tried to work on something outside, it is a whole different monster.

Toby: Question number two, Dan, where did you get the best cheeseburger you've ever had?

Dan: It probably had to be somewhere in Texas, and I don't think it was Whataburger, no, it was actually a place where, um, you could actually pick your own steak and cook it on the grill, as long as you're an adult, um, so I forget the name of the place. It was somewhere outside of Houston.

Paul: So I'm going to say, knock me over with a feather. I thought for sure I knew this answer for you, Dan, I thought for sure you were going to come back with either Bud's Broiler or Camellia Grill. Good. Now I'm glad I made him feel bad about that one.

Toby: Transport yourself now to Thanksgiving and you're bringing dessert. What are you bringing? I was hungry when I thought of these, if you couldn't tell.

Dan: Wow. Uh, growing up, it was, it was either pumpkin pie or, or pecan pie. Shoot. Do both.

Toby: Would you rather walk the 24 mile length of the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway or swim the 0.4 miles from Cafe Du Monde to Algiers Point across the Mississippi River?

Dan: I don't want to swim the Mississippi River just because of the undertow that the current undercurrents and all of that, you're not going to beat the current of the Mississippi ever. take the 24 mile hike across the causeway and it might take, uh, you know, six to eight hours, so be it.

Toby: So, if you see a man walking on the side of the causeway sometime, uh, that means Dan has taken me up on this offer.

Dan: And the causeway patrol has not hit him up yet. Jaywalking across a 24 mile bridge.

Toby: Dan, thanks very much.

Dan: Thank you.

Toby: Hear more about epoxy mastics and Carbomastic 15. Plus, Paul answers the four questions in part two.