While Waterlox enhances and beautifies all types of wood, it is our only choice for oily tropical hardwoods. Tropical hardwood like Cumaru, Ipe, Mahogany, and Brazilian Cherry has always been a challenge both interior and exterior. These woods are extremely dense and hard, and they are full of natural oils that many times will make drying and adhesion of most finishes difficult. Thick polyurethanes lay on the top, where they are prone to lose adhesion. A Tung oil and resin blend like Waterlox can offer the ease of maintenance, and lack of peeling of an oil finish, but with the hardness of varnish. Waterlox gives superior direct adhesion to tropical hardwood, and is even used as a seal coat under many other types of finishes that are otherwise incompatible with oily dense wood. There is no film building with Waterlox, even with repeat applications. Waterlox is very translucent and natural looking on tropical hardwood doors and flooring.
On Waterlox, scratches are much less visible than on a polyurethane, which is prone to show “whitish” scratching. Polyurethane scratches on dark hardwoods are even more pronounced. The other big advantage of Waterlox is that no sanding is never required for recoating. Just clean, and refresh every few years. This is just an elegant finish for tropical and domestic hardwood.
Bottom line, Waterlox is our best wood finish for south american and other tropical wood.
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