Summary

Dan Baribault and Paul Atzemis continue their exploration of the unique technology and wide range of use cases for surface-tolerant epoxy mastics like Carbomastic 15. Then, Paul likens himself to a cross between Rapunzel and Gandalf.

Timestamps

Click to follow along with the transcript:

• 00:00 – Carbomastic 15 performs at high temperatures
• 01:43 – Summarizing recent Carbomastic 15 use cases
• 04:00 – Understanding curing shrinkage stress
• 08:16 – The good (and bad) of slow dry times
• 10:17 – Importance of low solvent load
• 12:55 – Dan's weirdest Carbomastic 15 experience
• 13:58 – Advice to owners/specifiers comparing surface-tolerant epoxy mastic
• 15:16 – Paul's four questions

Transcript

Carbomastic 15 performs at high temperatures

Toby Wall: I am with Dan Baribault and Paul Atzemis we're getting right back into our discussion on surface tolerant epoxy mastics and Carbomastic 15. Paul, there's a surprising service environment where we've seen Carbomastic 15 perform very well, isn't there?

Paul Atzemis: One of the fantastic features that it has is, although it's not one of the products that we push in our, you know, high-temperature coatings under insulation, uh, type products, two really neat features is in its dry form it can tolerate 400 degrees under insulation and it performs well. Hot substrates, we can get up to 300 degrees. Now it requires a little different technique, a little more thinner. We got a special thinner for it because that will cause it to cure faster than you can get it on. But to be able to apply it to a 300 degree substrate, and to be able to put it under insulation at even hotter is a, is a great niche spot in the market to be able to say this product that does everything else, when your pipe or your, your structure, whatever it is you're painting is hot, you can't do as good a surface prep, you've got difficult conditions, this product may even do better under these conditions than if you could have done everything perfect and it's a, it's a neat, unique spot that it fills.

Summarizing recent Carbomastic 15 use cases

Toby: On the subject of its surface tolerance, we talk about using this in places where other things can't go and Paul, you said, well, sometimes you can't blast, or we have the testing that shows this performs better when you haven't blasted than when it has, and I can share two examples of where blasting was either unwanted or impossible.

One of them was a resort hotel down in Mexico. There were some pilings, I think, that needed to be coated. This is a very, very humid beachside environment near a mangrove forest where environmental rules tell you you cannot blast.

You must not blast. And so the answer from us was Carbomastic 615. So that's, that's one. The other I'll share is a construction project that, to my knowledge, is still ongoing up in Massachusetts. If you're driving north out of Boston toward Salem, there's a bridge that you will cross but the big motor that hoists this bridge up high enough over the water so that boats can go underneath it, this is primed with Carbomastic 15. And the reason they primed it with 15 was because it needed to be assembled before it was coated. Assembly occurred via a process involving high heat.

So once it's all assembled, you can't blast because you're going to get blast media inside all of these nooks and crannies of a piece of equipment that might take another year to rebuild and cost you a million dollars. So there's a number of places you can use this, probably more places you can use this than people out there who would benefit from it might realize.

Paul: I do remember both of those two. I had a little bit of involvement to a lesser degree, just kind of in passing. It was, it was kind of exactly as you said, the humid moist one. , you know, yes, that's a situation we switch over to 615 because it tolerates that early moisture and we can handle that. And 15 on those substrates that are going to be operating hot, you've got a lot going on and you're not going to be able to do any surface prep, honestly, there's nothing on the market that's going to beat 15 in those scenarios.

Understanding curing shrinkage stress

Toby: As I understand it, and I'll, I'll hope that both of you can correct me if I'm wrong about this, but when we say surface tolerance, we're referring to the ability of this coating to adhere very well to a substrate, even when it's not been ideally prepared, let's say, or when the surface or the substrate contains something that's on it.

Like tight rust, another coating. What's happening here is the, the coating is once it cures, it is not breaking those things that were already on the substrate loose from it, which could then become a cause for a failure down the road, right? And you were discussing way, way earlier in this discussion, the tension that this, that this coating applies to the surface once it cures, it's a lower tension, a lower value compared to something else. Can you talk more about the, the tension that this applies versus the tension something maybe more conventional applies to a surface.

Paul: That was, that was kind of the area we were tiptoeing around was how much stress does it apply to the system, which could cause whatever's there, whether it be light, tight rust, existing coatings, um, edges, mill scale, um, you know, causing any of those to pop loose. And, and I did pull one of the, you know, one of these old test reports and basically, you know, we're looking at tens to, you know, a low couple hundred PSI worth of, of stress that's being added with a, with a product like Carbomastic 15, as opposed to a traditional epoxy, which may be adding 700 or a thousand PSI of pressure that it's actually pulling on it because as these shrink, it puts stress on the system. I think one of the things, um, I've had a lot of people in my years of, of talking with people, "your paint fell off. The paint, look, we put this on and everything fell off as soon as we did it." And they send me in paint chips and I, and I look at them or I walk onto the job site and I look at them and on the back of it is not the same paint as is on the front of it. And I look at it and I go, no, my paint did its job exactly. It stuck to everything that was there. The problem was something under it could not handle that stress. So those are traditional systems where you put on a normal epoxy and it puts on more pressure. It's more pulling force, more weight than that existing old coating can tolerate and it causes it to come off.

Probably some of the most famous examples are when they bring it in and it's got dirt on the background. Paint stuck great to that dirt. The dirt just didn't stick. So, when you look at those kinds of things, you know, one of the things that we, that we talk a lot about is how many overcoats can you put on before you have to start worrying about too much coating?

And, It frequently comes down to how old, how strong, how durable, and what type of coating was the first one, because that's the one that's bearing the majority of the, of the stress and the pressure. And so then you have to look at what types of coatings are on top of it. How much stress are they applying?

And so the more you end up putting on, the more it is important to put on a product like Carbomastic 15 for that last coat, because it is applying the least amount of stress that we can to still make a new uniform system.

Dan Baribault: That being compared to other epoxies and other vendor epoxy coatings, where , you know, you want your maintenance overcoat system or otherwise to impart the lowest amount of curing shrinkage stress as possible.

Paul: Yep.

Toby: I've understood coatings to be a trade-off. Everything is a trade-off. Are there disadvantages to a low curing shrinkage stress?

Dan: As far as a maintenance overcoat, I cannot, in my mind, think of anybody, any customer, any, engineer in charge of asset protection and maintenance where low curing shrinkage stress of maintenance overcoat product or of a coating period was a bad thing or a negative.

The good (and bad) of slow dry times

Paul: The main thing that we see with it is the effect that typically these coatings are very slow to dry. That's partly how they don't impart as much stress is they're very slow to that cure process. That's the downside is typically the less stress you're putting into the system the slower the drying process and, let's face it, when you give people a choice of this one's fast-dry and this one's slow-dry, 90 percent of the time they are gonna pick the fast-dry one and it doesn't matter what anything else is. Because there are risks. You know the more it's open the more it's susceptible to damage, you know, the slower it's drying, the more it's open, more bugs could stick in it, people could touch it, all sorts of damage could happen. But at the same time, you're putting in a nice, slow wetting out, and I guess maybe the thing to compare it to is the ultra-fast curing products.

Maybe looking more at like a polyurea or the structural epoxy kind of products, you know, that, they're seconds and they're dry. Those products require perfect substrate, perfect cleanliness, huge anchor profiles, because they don't get an opportunity to get into the pores, the nooks, the crannies, the spots to just lock everything in place.

They hit and they dry. But you look at a product like these that are very slow to dry, it gives them a chance to just, while it's sitting there on the surface, it's just working its way into every nook and cranny and taking advantage of every minute area of the surface profile to be able to hold on to and to bite down and to lock things in place.

So that's really where that benefit is. But the downside is, is probably dry time.

Dan: That's why when somebody is wanting quick shop throughput.

Paul: Yeah. It ain't this product.

Dan: Okay. Just like old long oil alkyds. No, that's not the one.

Paul: Nope.

Importance of low solvent load

Toby: All of this time that you have available so that it can reach into these nooks and crannies as you said brings me to the, I think the one last characteristic of 15 that I thought was fascinating, which is that in those instances where it's applied over an existing coating, you walk the tightrope where the solvent that is in there, contributes to its wetting properties. The solvent that is in there might dissolve the coating that it is trying to stick to. And so as I understand it, there is something going on with Carbomastic 15 where its solvent load is comparatively low, and yet, it is able to wet the way that it does.

Can we say something about that or are we starting to tiptoe into a secret recipe territory here?

Paul: So the good part is that they don't give Dan and I the secret recipe, so we can, we can kind of talk about it.

Dan: Yeah, not spill the beans.

Paul: Yeah. But I think you, you hit on a couple of good points there.

One of them being it's 90 percent solids. So there's not a lot of solvent in it to begin with.

Dan: 90 percent solids by volume. The other 10 percent by volume is inherent solid.

Paul: We're not imparting a lot of, of aggressive solvents to the thing that could, to the system that could be attacking the substrate, the existing coating. And usually in order to get that slow wetting, the only, the other way you would get it is with slow solvents. In this scenario, like with Carbomastic 15, we've gone with a long chain to help slow that down. So the resin is what is slow. We're not using solvents to slow it down. And that's how we're able to do it at a 90 percent solids product because we're using a nice long chain oil as the backbone for what we're doing. And it gives us tons of time to be able to unfold and intermix with itself and if anybody's ever seen this product, the part B when, you know, it's an A and a B and the part B it's kind of that tannish clay kind of...

Dan: ...clay looking. Yep.

Paul: Yeah. And you couldn't, you can take that bucket and you can turn it upside down and nothing comes out. It is just that thick.

And so, you know, it takes those two components being put together even to make something that you can spread out. It has that high of solids, that low of solvent content. And it's just a factor of the resin that's in it is a nice, long, long, slow resin that, that allows it to wet out.

Dan's weirdest Carbomastic 15 experience

Toby: Dan, in the last episode, I asked you about your strangest inspection. Along similar lines, I'm curious if you could tell us about a very strange experience that you've had with Carbomastic 15 specifically.

Dan: There is one failure I recall with Carbomastic 15 w here the painters went into the ballast tanks without adequate lighting and sprayed it airless spray so they just hammered the insides of the ballast tank but on the floor, half-inch to three-quarters inch thick puddles of Carbomastic 15. can we leave that?" I said, "no, you're going to have to remove it and reapply it." "So how do we remove it?" I said, "jackhammers? Air chisels? Not C4. That doesn't work.

Toby: Official Carboline Tech Service guidance there is, don't use C4 to remove Carbomastic 15.

Dan: Right.

Toby: Is there anything that we've missed this isn't a sales pitch, although this last hour might feel a whole lot like one.

Advice to owners/specifiers comparing surface-tolerant epoxy mastic

Paul: I think we, I think we covered just about everything there is to cover about the technology in general and the product specifically. It's just one of those, you have to pay attention. Not all are created equal. We know in our lineup, our mastics, we have differences in how they all behave. Some of them put more stress. Some of them have less or different aluminum. You know, so they're all going to have different properties and that's, that's why you need to talk to somebody who's familiar with them. Tech Service, your sales rep, talk to somebody who understands them to know what's different between them. And that comes down to even when you're working with, with somebody else on the dark side. They're going to have different products that have different properties. I would argue nobody has one like Carbomastic 15, but they're all going to have ones that they would have to put up against it if that was the way it was written into a spec. And so you just need to know what it is that you're comparing and understand how those go, and by all means, you know, you can call Tech Service. We talk with people about this every day and, and, you know, Dan been around for a long time and seen it in every way, shape, and form.

And, and we're happy to talk with you about those.

Toby: So, Paul, the shoe's on the other foot.

Paul: All right, let's see what we can do.

Paul's four questions

Toby: Where you've, you've spent, uh, countless interviews asking the four questions. I've got four questions for you.

Paul: All right.

Toby: The phone rings at RD&I, Carboline's Research Development and Innovation Center.

There's a technical question. Paul, you're one of the ones who picks up those calls.

Paul: Mm hmm.

Toby: What's a really, really weird tech service phone call that you can remember receiving.

Paul: There's probably a hundred of them, but the one that always stands out and, and it's really not that too terrible.

It's turned into just a running joke at our, at our, my house, my whole family knows the story because it was the very first phone call that I received in tech service. And it takes a unique call to actually remember the first call. Now, keep in mind, you know, as a group, we get several thousand calls a month, hundreds of emails a day.

It's just, there's, it's a, it's an insane number. The very first one was I answered the phone and it was clearly just an old farmer guy who was working on his farm. I'm talking to him for a second and he's painting is the gate. You know, it's just, you know, those steel gates that keep the cows in the pasture.

Dan: It's cattle gate.

Paul: Yeah, cattle gate is all it is. And he asks me if his paint's still any good. And so I asked him, well, you know, what's it look like? He's like, well, it looks like paint. Okay. I was like, can you, can you tell me anything? Can you read the label? No, I can't really, really read the label. He could see the numbers on it.

So he told me the numbers and I recognized, you know, this was also first day on the phones. I was able to look it up and I see that it's, it was honestly, it was one of our alkyds and, So I asked him, I was like, okay, I said, so, um, what is it that you're doing? How are you doing this? And I was like, okay, he says, and I was like, do you know how old it is?

He goes, well, I got it out of the barn and I haven't been over on this side. He goes, it's been at least six or eight years. So we're talking about a product that depending on which one it's got two or three years shelf life on it, and he's got six or eight years. And so I was like, okay, so is the, is the barn heated or anything?

No, no, no, there's nothing. It's just sitting out here in the weather. Okay. It's like, can I use it? It's like, well, is it liquid? It's like, well, yeah, but it seems kind of thick and I literally just asked him, can you put a stick in it? He's like, hold on, let me check. He puts a stick in and he's like, yeah, moves all around.

He's like, well, take the stick out. Does it drip off the stick? Yeah. Okay. Go ahead and use it.

That was my first call with Carboline. First Tech Service phone call was, can you put a stick in it?

Toby: I'm thinking maybe a new episode title.

Paul: Right?

Toby: Can you put a stick in it?

Dan: Just waiting for him to answer. As far as putting a stick in it, is that like, you know, when you want to roast a pig?

Toby: If you got to choose your superpower, Paul?

Paul: I've always been, uh, keen to the, to the more modern era Batman. When they're doing their Justice League and he gets asked, What's your superpower? He says, "I'm rich."

It's probably the most realistic of the superpowers as well. But, uh, you know, the, the ability to be able to have unlimited resources to make and do things for whatever your whim happens to be at the time.. I'm okay paying somebody else to do it. The modern Batman.

Toby: It's just like, it's just like anybody who's gets those three wishes from the genie and how would you use your wish? And I'll say, well, the, my first wish is give me unlimited additional wishes. It solves every problem.

Paul: Yeah. Yep.

Toby: Alright, but we do live in the real world, so you don't get to choose your superpower, but the superpower is chosen for you, based on your character traits.

What do you think, Paul, is the superpower that is given to you?

Paul: Hmm. So I've got, I've got two thoughts and it's, anybody who's known me before, I've had a beard my whole life. The last, uh, let's say year or so, beard's been getting longer growing out. So it's got to be either some, somewhere between like a Rapunzel kind of thing, or I've had several times lately in, in meetings been referred to as when I walk into the room, the Gandalf is here.

So, so maybe it is a, a magical superpower of a wizard.

Dan: There you go.

Paul: Yeah.

Dan: Kind of like, kind of like, uh, Samson had the strength.

Toby: Gandalf had a staff and I think for Paul, if he's the Gandalf, he gets that stick that the farmer had. With the paint dripping on it.

Paul: It's got a little 8215 on it now.

Toby: This next one's a lot easier for you. Pancakes or waffles?

Paul: Oh, pancakes.

Truly, if you wanted a more difficult, pancakes or French toast.

Toby: Okay. How do you...

Paul: So traditionally I've been making pancakes since I could reach the stove, three, four years old, I was at the stove making pancakes as a kid.

Love them, make them, I've tailored them over the years for exactly how everybody likes them. So I like them on the griddle is basically how I do them all. I am in the constant search for the best French toast. I love French toast. If so, if I go to a restaurant, when we go out for breakfast, I never order pancakes.

I always order French toast.

Dan: Do you ask their secrets?

Paul: Oh yeah. Yeah.

Dan: Okay.

Paul: Yeah. I mean, we have a diner up the street from us that, so we have a Mardi Gras party at our house every year. And our tradition is the day after the Mardi Gras party, my wife and I wake up, we go have breakfast at the diner up the street and I get French toast every year.

That is the thing. And they make fantastic French toast. We go there more than that time, but that's our, that's our tradition. And I love theirs, but, I'm always, always looking for French toast.

Toby: So I hope we've made everybody hungry, and now that you're thinking of where your next French toast is going to come from, Paul, thanks for joining us.

Paul: Oh yeah. Thanks for having me again.

Toby: Great conversation.