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Please click the questions below to display the answer:  The need for Protective coatings
What is wrong with wax?
What are polymers?
Silicone polymer and “polymer coatings”
What about silicone and paint
Is Permagard 100% compatible?
What is a polish?
Benefits of treating painted surfaces
Modern paints and lacquers
Micro and deep scratches
Oxidation
Advantages and disadvantages of durable coatings
The need for protective coatings
Ever since high value surfaces have been part of our lives, the need to protect and nourish them has been recognised. The idea is that prevention is better than cure and that it should be cheaper and easier to repair and maintain the coating than the actual high-value object’s surface that we seek to protect.
Perhaps one of the oldest and most well known materials used as a protective coating is wax, originally beeswax (but today there are many types of “wax”, most are synthetic manufactured waxes) and used to great effect on wood furniture. Oils and lacquers are two other types of common protective materials that we are all familiar with from our own homes, the difference being that oils do not generally form a deep protective layer but are absorbed into the material to be protected, whereas lacquers were originally developed as a coating with its own depth (i.e. thickness) both for their own intrinsic beauty and for their hard wearing properties. Vehicles that are loved and cherished by their owners are traditionally waxed and polished regularly. This is both time consuming, repetitive and not an ideal protection for vehicles subject to harsh lives outdoors, regular washing at one extreme to never getting washed at the other, bug impacts, tar, road grime, rain and sun, to all the things that can fall out of the sky: from bird droppings to tree sap, industrial fallout, pollution and so on. And so the search for protective coating materials of a higher performance has been sought. Higher performance = longer lasting, more durable, and more resistant to wear, and if possible easy to keep clean and repair when damaged. top
What is wrong with wax?
There are several reasons why a wax of whatever type, be it the most expensive all-natural specially grown in the rain forest carnuba to the cheapest supermarket wax extracted from turtles, is not the best material to protect a vehicle long term: Wax is not durable -it can be washed off, meaning many repetitive hours of potential leisure time lost to re-waxing not to mention the cost in time and products. Wax is soft, and softens dramatically when heated. Vehicles operate at elevated temperatures and in all weathers. Any grime or pollutants resting on the softened wax surfaces will become embedded as the wax re-hardens overnight, and the next time the boat, aircraft or car is washed these trapped pollutants act as abrasives, leading to paint or gel coat damage, often seen as the spider-web like micro-scratches under sunlight or street lighting
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What are polymers?
In the search for more durable and harder protective coatings polymers of one type or another have been used. Polymers are long chain molecules that have many valuable properties for use in protective coatings and sealants. Natural latex rubber is a polymer, and all plastics and man made rubber-type compounds are also polymers, as are many of today’s high performance fabrics used in sportswear. Did you realise that cool Nike or Adidas t-shirt you are wearing may be made from plastic? If you are wearing a fleece then this is probably made from recycled plastic! Paints and lacquers, as well as those you might have decorated your house with also utilise various plastic polymers to enhance their performance. top Silicone Polymer and “polymer coatings”
The term “polymer” has become widely used and abused. Many of the first generation performance coatings used silicone polymer as the main ingredient to create a protective layer over paint, and it is still widely used in many of the leading brands of auto polish, wax, liquid wax, shine and compound abrasives, as it gives an instant quick shine result. Silicone is widely available and inexpensive as it is one of the most versatile commercial polymers with many applications in many industries. Examples include bathroom tile sealants and grouts, glass sealants, and it’s the active shine ingredient in many household spray-on / wipe-off polishes and so on. top What about silicone and paint?
Permagard’s coating products do not contain silicone but instead use what we believe is the most durable type of specialist plastic polymer suited to paints and gel coats use that is currently commercially available. We call it “reactive polymer”, as the full chemical name is rather obscure and not particularly memorable. Silicone has known problems with reactions to paint and even more commonly when a car needs re-painting. In short, paint will not adhere well to a surface that has silicone or silicone residues on it. Furthermore, because many of the inexpensive silicone-based polishes and waxes do not use any paint pore blockers, silicone is able to move through the pores in what is known as “drift”, and may be trapped within the layers of paint and clear coat. This can lead to a breakdown of the surface paint or lacquer layers over time which can range from the hardly noticeable to what becomes in the worst cases, a very serious loss of clarity and gloss in the surface. But the most common silicone related problems arise in the event of a re-spray becoming necessary, where the painter can encounter many difficulties trying to get a good finish on silicone impregnated surfaces, and even have a “perfect” finish returned by an unhappy customer a few weeks or months down the road with paint bubbling or pin-holes appearing in the surface. It is because of these increasingly well known problems that most polish products have dropped any references to silicone in their marketing. The term “polymer” has now become the word in the marine and automotive industries that everyone uses in an attempt to avoid naming the real active ingredient in their product. So nine times out of ten, a “polymer based” product means it’s a silicone based product. Check a few of the labels on any of the polish products you have in your shop and you’ll find it crops up everywhere, and if it doesn’t, the term polymer does. Of course the word “polymer” on its own is actually meaningless. It’s like saying our products are “molecular based”. Yes sir, our products are made from atoms and molecules. True, but not very specific information. And this is the idea behind re-labeling and re-marketing silicone based products as “polymer based”, to avoid specific mention of silicone as the basis. top   
Permagard is 100% paint compatible
One of the most important ingredients for the long term durability of the Permagard coating is the pore blocking material incorporated in the formulation. The non-silicone reactive polymer coating that result in the high gloss finish actually locks into and then cures above this pore blocking layer. We call our plastic coating ingredient reactive polymer because of this locking reaction that takes place deep inside the porous paint surface, and this has two important results: One, the interlocking results in a surface coating that is strongly bonded to the paint itself, meaning it cannot be washed off, unlike a wax which is not able to strongly adhere to the paint. Two, the pores where the bonding and interlocking occurs are blocked in this process, preventing the reactive polymer from drifting through (which is what happens with silicone products), and so it will not cause repaint problems in the future as it remains only on the outer surfaces. Incidentally, it is this reaction that is similar to the one that holds the non-stick coating to the frying pan. And in fact our pore blocking material is similar to the active ingredient of the non-stick coating. Why is any of this important? As potential Permagard customer we think it is important we highlight to you the difference between our products, the thoroughness of our product development and our techniques compared to the often cheaper products and services offered by our competition, and this understanding enables us to better explain to you exactly what you can expect and why it’s the best long-term care solution for your vehicle vehicles. top
What is a polish?
A polish is traditionally a cleaning compound that contains some tiny abrasive particles which are used to “scrub” a surface clean and bright. Any of the compound abrasives that you use in your paint or body shop are traditional polishes, and these may or may not contain silicone as an additional shine enhancing medium.
Polishes achieve their cleaning and brightening actions by cutting back the surface, actually thinning it down in the process and reducing its depth. In this way minor surface imperfections, some scratches and oxidation can be removed by polishes, but the resulting polished surface will have a very high density of smaller polishing scratches, which can often be seen as a hazing effect, especially on darker colours. If great care and skill have not been used in the process, results can be even worse, with deep circular scratches introduced by the high speed polisher or paint becoming so thin in places that primer or even bare metal shows through. These polishing scratches need to be hidden by use of a masking agent such as a wax. As soon as this is washed off the polishing scratches will again be visible, and of course the original paint that’s left on the car is now reduced by the cutting action of the polish. This means that polishing with abrasive products is also not an ideal process for keeping the maximum depth of paint and clear coat on your car. Less depth of clear coat means less depth of colour also, and less overall gloss. It also means less protection for the gel coat or metal work. top Benefits of treating painted surfaces
A finer surface also means an overall smaller surface area. Both of these factors mean that grime and other pollutants have a reduced chance to take hold on treated surfaces, and consequently they’re easier to wash and maintain. Ease of washing is a key factor in maintaining long term gloss and condition. Much of the micro-scratching (the “spider’s webs” that appear all over the paint) developed over time is due to inappropriate washing techniques and often the use of too much applied force when the person tries to “scrub” a vessel or vehicle clean as the dirt is stuck solid.
Using detergents to clean also has two significant downsides: one very major drawback is more detergents entering our water supply systems having a major environmental impact; and another is that most owners will never use enough water to completely rinse all traces of detergents off the surface of their vessel or vehicle. This results in a detergent film building up on the paint and a dull, low gloss appearance.
When a surface is finer and less porous than is possible with a spray-applied clear coat lacquer, it is much easier to remove dirt and so detergents are not necessary, only clean water. No detergents to rinse off means an overall lower use of water. And much less force is required to clean, and so softer materials can be used instead of harsh abrasive materials such as terry towels. top   
Modern paints and lacquers
Didn’t think soft fluffy terry towels were abrasive? Try this test on your own car or boat and see. Take your soft fluffy towel and use it to rub a clean area of the paint that is free of dirt and dust. Look carefully at the result under direct sunlight or a spot lamp and you will see the micro-scratches appear and grow in the surface while you rub. You’ll find this particularly easy to do on darker colours. On light naturally reflective colours such as light silvers you won’t find it so easy to spot the damage you are doing, but it is there nonetheless and a strong halogen spot lamp will show it up easily, as will street lighting. Now, maybe you won’t think of soft fluffy towels as quite so soft after all. This is because the term abrasive is relative. Don’t worry about the micro-scratches you just put in, as these will go when you treat your expensive asset with Permagard. Modern paints and lacquers are relatively soft in terms of their hardness and scratch resistance. This is because; firstly all manufacturers have switched to environmentally friendly water based paints and no longer use the poisonous lead-hardened paints of old. Water based paints are not as hard as lead based paints. And secondly, paints have to cope with body panels that move, flex, expand and contract. As an example if a car is driven there is chassis flex, there are temperature changes and so on. If, the car was painted with one of the very hard modern furniture lacquers, it would be more scratch resistant but would quickly develop other major problems such as cracking, splintering and increased chipping. So modern paints are designed not to crack when movement occurs but to be more flexible, and because of this they tend to be softer and very easily scratched and damaged. top Micro and deep scratches
As has already been stated, one of the most important ingredients for the durability of the Permagard coating is the pore blocking material incorporated in the formulation. The plastic coating that results in the high gloss finish actually locks into and then cures above this pore blocking layer, so smoothing out the paint’s surface, resulting in the fine finish that we achieve. This is how micro-scratches are “removed” in the treatment process, not by cutting back the top layer to below the depth of the scratches, with a resulting thinner total depth of paint, but by doing the exact opposite, and instead filling in micro-scratches with clear plastic solids, adding the coating depth over the whole painted surface. Now of course this means that any scratch that is deeper than what we term a micro-scratch will not be fully filled, and in order to enhance or completely remove deep scratches an abrasive product will need to be additionally used before application. Paint thickness, or depth, is usually measured in microns. 1 micron = 1 millionth of a metre, and you need 1000 microns to make one millimetre. So as we measure car paint thickness in microns you can see that there is not a great deal of paint actually on a car, and that’s before any abrasive products ever get used. A single application of the Permagard body coating when fully cured is approximately 5-7 microns deep, depending on prevailing atmospheric and paintwork conditions, so micro-scratches as far as we are concerned are those scratches < 6 microns in depth, and deep scratches are > 6 microns. An average clear coat layer on a new car can be anywhere between 10 and 15 microns in depth. If the car has been polished with a compound abrasive it may have only half its original depth remaining. top Oxidation
Nearly all materials react with oxygen in the air to a greater or lesser extent, and the results of this reaction which is called oxidation and takes place all the time can be seen on boats, cars, aircraft and all painted surfaces, as well as on untreated metals in the form of rust. Oxidation results in a dull chalky appearance and cannot be washed off. It is particularly noticeable on solid gloss colours such as reds (which tend to “fade” to orange-red), whites (which appear to yellow) etc. The Permagard system removes oxidation from the paint surfaces chemically using specialist solvents of varying degrees of strength and not by the traditional use of abrasive polishes. In addition to the reactive polymer coating which also contains oxidation removal ingredients, there are two varying strength pre-treatments which can really clean up older painted surfaces with heavier oxidation and a greater density of micro-scratches. The Permagard body coating once applied to gel coat painted surfaces significantly retards further oxidation, and if followed up with maintenance service coatings will eradicate oxidation altogether, resulting in an indefinitely lasting gloss. top Advantages and Disadvantages of durable body coatings
On the whole treatment of any new or used boat, car or aircraft with Permagard's gloss protection coatings will significantly enhance the appearance and ease of regular care and cosmetic maintenance, resulting in real long term cost and time savings enhancing the vehicle’s re-sale value.
Advantages include:
- a durable brilliant gloss protective barrier coating that is easy to repair
- total removal of oxidation and significant reduction in micro-scratch density while adding to the actual depth of paint
- no more wax or polishing
- easy to wash and keep looking brilliant
- detergents not required
- anti-oxidant
- no silicones, no paint reactions nor re-paint problems
Possible disadvantages and counter arguments
- “I like waxing and polishing, what will I do on Sunday mornings now?” The Permagard after sales service includes an additional Permagard home maintenance and care kit which can replace the waxing, but maintain the quality time away from the family.
- It's too expensive. Add up the trips to waxing services, time wasted doing it yourself, resulting paintwork damage and loss of paint depth from traditional polishing etc. On used vehicles, with very bad condition paint or gel coat, the correct comparison on cost is with a total re-spray, not with the cost of waxing it.
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