
Could one of these be the best adhesion primer on the market? The results of this part of the test were really easy to report: all four passed with flying colours, regardless of whether the varnished surface was keyed or not.
#Stix paint download#
Interestingly, on the Zinsser app (if you don’t have this, it’s free to download and is a handy guide to what primers they recommend on which surfaces) they recommend B-I-N on stained or varnished wood (for interior use), so I replaced the Bullseye with its cousin, and also dropped Otex Akva out of the test, so the four products tested were Zinsser B-I-N, Zinsser AllCoat, Crown PX3 and Crown PX4 (all of which also have stain-blocking properties in addition to adhesion properties).

Therefore, to avoid using a separate stain block, you might want to use one of the “all-in-one” stain-blocking adhesion primers that I used during this test. What it didn’t do – and in fairness, it never claimed to do – was to block stains, so it did allow the brown of the woodstain to bleed back through when I used it. I should say though, that I have in the past used it on both stained and varnished wood, and it stuck really well, so as an adhesion primer I’m confident using it on these surfaces. So I wasn’t able to include it in the latter stages of the test. Sadly by this stage of the testing I had run out of Whitsons, which is a primer I really like. When the surface was keyed, all the primers performed significantly better I’d give both Crown products, Whitsons and Zinsser All-Coat 10 out of 10, but the other two (Otex Akva and Bullseye 1-2-3) still weren’t perfect, a small amount of the primer did scratch off in my test Wood Treated with Ronseal Yacht Varnish Haft primer from Caparol was one I really did want to include as I know a lot of forum members rave about it, but it was very hard to get hold of during lockdown, so I’m afraid I haven’t included it (but would love to give it a go at some point in the future).

Obviously, I haven’t tested every product, and apologies if I didn’t include your favourite. So we need more adhesion primers because of other changes in our industry, and the manufacturers have been only too pleased to oblige!īut are they all the same? I thought I’d put a few to the test and see how they compare and see if I can find the best adhesion primer on the market. Water-based paints for…no, I won’t say “trim” in case I offend someone…woodwork are clearly here to stay, whether you love them or loathe them, but they don’t always stick to any surface, and often an adhesion primer is the solution. For example, it’s now relatively straightforward to spray furniture or kitchen cabinets to give them a new lease of life, but you want to make sure the paint sticks. My feeling is that this is driven by other changes in our market.

Adhesion primers seem to be a big “thing” at the moment on the Decorators Forum UK – OK, maybe not as big as spraying and/or masking, but there do seem to be a lot of them about, whereas a few years ago your choice was basically Zinsser Bullseye 1-2-3.
