As one who has built, owned and sold Mahogany boats which have been through some of the most extreme of weather conditions, I can say, at this time there are not permanent solutions to wood coatings.

We have impregnated wood with epoxyÂs, tried varnishes from many manufactures and of course the old stand by of paint. It all comes down to knowing the nature of the materials you are dealing with. All your coating have the same inherent weakness, sun light, moisture, temperature, pollution, salts, etcÂ

First, all coating such as urethanes, acrylics and plastic base paints contain something called plasticizers. These are the chemicals that give your coating elasticity. Over time exposure to UV and the elements these plasticizers leach out of the coating causing them to become brittle. The inherent problem with this is wood and to a lesser extent metal, plastic, or mineral materials such as concrete, housing coatings and composites, expand and contracts considerably from exposure to heat and cold. As the plasticizers leach out the coatings ability to stretch to meet the requirements of expansion and contraction of the wood slowly fails or pulls away from the wood itself. A lot of people hear the term UV and think of fading but it is far more then that in regards to varnishes. UV protection either added or coming with coatings is designed to prevent fading but not the leaching plasticizers. As those of us who have worked with these coating know once you have a crack or breach of the coating environmental permeation will expand on the failure of the coating. The life span of such a coating really comes down to just a few things: exposure to UV and the elements, Expansion and contraction rate of the material it is used on and the ability for the coating to adhere to base material. Coating some woods will last longer then others due the specific expansion rate and how well the coating adheres. Woods lighter in colors which do not heat up as much in the sun or some of your hard woods which expand and contract less may extend the lifespan of the coating.

Over all our love of the look, feel and ease of use of wood will continue to be a high maintance proposition but as for this personÂs opinion, I love real wood and the extra effort of maintaining it has its own rewards. Maybe one-day pain companies will release coating that can handle longer durations on wood but like the rest of us I await that day.