I'm going to be painting a piece of furniture which I have completely stripped bare and sanded moderately with 120grit sand paper.

I intend to spray this wood with either Sherwin Williams oil paint or Sherwin Williams "waterborne enamel" which was suggested in this thread (thank you). After it has been painted, I plan to distress it a bit by sanding through the paint in certain areas - all the way to the wood. Because of this, I'm hesitant to use a primer because I don't want there to be a multicolor 'layered' effect where the wood is sanded.

Can I get away with not using a primer?

Thanks in advance!

 

I'm not overly experienced with 'distressed' paint jobs but generally you need the primer to get good adhesion along with having it prevent the raw wood from sucking the sheen out of the enamel. You might consider having the primer tinted to match the top coat.

 

Good point. What primer do you suggest? or just whatever SW recommends?

 

SWP has several primers that will work well, letting them decide which primer is best for your application and top coat is usually best. Most SWP primers have to be tinted at 1/2 formula to get the color right - but the folks at SWP know that.

 

Well, the guy at SWP told me not to bother with primer, just to use the first coat of the oil paint as the primer. So, no recommendations for a primer from him... For fun, I went to a BM paint store and asked which type of primer to use with an oil paint and they told me latex. That's odd. Latex primer for oil paint? He said it's because the latex primer will be forgiving on top of wood that expands and contracts.

I'm lost.

 

I've never had any issues using a latex primer and an oil base top coat on the interior. They claim the same can be done on the exterior but I'm not sure I'd trust it. You can always use a solvent based primer with latex or oil for the top coat. Oil base undercoaters seal better but latex undercoaters are often easier to sand and cover better. A lot depends on the particular job at hand as to which primer works best.

As noted previously, I've not done much distressed painting so I'm not sure what's best prep wise for your application. I do know that when enamel is applied over raw wood the sheen won't be as consistent and the finish won't be as slick.

 

I've found that when you sand into most oil based paints, you can usually get a nice feathered edge but it seems like latex paints peel more easily when the sanding heats them up. It's like the paint lets go when it gets hot. Can't say that I've ever sanded into waterborne enamel though.

 

Waterborne enamels dry to a harder film than latex enamels and can be heavily sanded. I found this out when I had a stack of freshly enameled doors [sprayed] knocked down That's when I found out how tough waterborne enamel was .... I'm not sure how I'd have salvaged those doors if I had used latex enamel. If you need to sand thru the enamel - I'd want either oil base or waterborne, not latex enamel.

 

I wondered about that. They always say that there really isn't much difference between oil based products and their newer waterborne counterparts... its just that a different liquid (water rather than solvent) is being used to hold the paint suspension.

But I've always been a little skeptical of these "new and improved" products. (like is oil based poly really equal in durability to water based?)

Good to know.

 

Ya, it has to be proved to me that something totally new is better than the old tried and true. I originally switched from oil base enamel to waterborne because I was having detrimental effects from using oil base coatings [occupational overexposure to solvents] While I was mad that some idiot opened up the exterior doors allowing the wind to blow my freshly painted doors to hit the floor, I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to sand all the crud out of the paint a day or two later.