[Ansteorra] ISO Information and/or Advice

[Haraldr Bassi]

That's a tough one.

For new(er) canvas, latex exterior house paint diluted 50% with water works well. It absorbs and
stays reasonably flexible after drying.

But your canvas is substantially older. Most people I know with canvas as well aged as yours
would simply replace it and thank it for almost two decades of service.

So, trying to get a few more years out of, you can treat it like we would if we were preparing
canvas to be used as a ground cloth. Use a garden sprayer and spray coat it. You could use
Thompson's water seal or try the latex exterior diluted. Unfortunately you will only have one of
those as an option as they are likely to be mutually exclusive. For the age, the Thompson's
might be a more reliable solution, but won't allow you to do any decoration. Both should be able
to fill in any pinholes.

No matter the sealant, the result will be a tent that is significantly heavier than it once was.
It also will never breathe the way it used to. Ever. It will effectively turn into an air tight
cover.

Had the tent not so much age on it, those two years as a storage building are probably the 
biggest issue, I'd suggest coating it with canvak, a sealer specifically for canvas tents. It's 
result is similar to the original sunforger type treatments.

Canvak is more expensive than Thompson's but might be sufficient to restore the canvas to 
perfect function.

You might even be able to paint over canvak with 50% latext exterior to provide decorations etc.

Hope that helps.

Haraldr


On 12/31/13 6:42 PM, Texas Treasures wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> We are in search of information and/or advice.  We have a 14’x16’ marquee canvas tent we
> bought new about 18 years ago.  We have used it a lot for camping and for two years we used
> as a storage building.  The problem is the top, because of its age it has small pin holes all
> over.  We would like to find a way to seal it so we can stay dry at Gulf War.  We would like
> to try panting the top with a latex house paint because it should seal most of the holes.
> Will this work?  Will the paint run? Can it be applied thick? We were thinking of painting it
> a dark blue inside and out and then painting stars on the inside.  Will this work?  Or what
> should we do?  Any other ideas?
>
> Awaiting your thoughts and suggestions, thank you,
>
> Franklin _______________________________________________ Ansteorra mailing list
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