Any experience with ceramic or nano coating wood finishes? E.g. Blacktail's N3

[Jasmin]

Hi,

does anyone here have experience with ceramic wood finishes such as the Black Forest Ceramic Coating (link) or the Blacktail's  N3 Nano Coating (link). In Europe, there is another seller. All of them probably come from the same producer with slightly different formulations. They are always applied on top of other finishes.

On YouTube, they all seem to be totally convinced and also use them for their high-dollar clients. Blacktail describes it as "next generation wood protection". I think these finishes are already very popular in the automotive industry.

However, I can't really find any independent reviews. Increase in sheen particularly compared to Rubio without additional coating seems pretty obvious. But what is about protection? How are these finishes holding up over time? A big benefit of Rubio are spot repairs. How does that work with these extra coatings? Would be great to get some independent opinion and not only these potentially biased ads for their own products.

 

[xedos]

If the customer is paying, why not not try it yourself and see ?

 

[woodferret]

From the automotive side... (same thing)... think of it as a hard, relative thick layer of top-coat.  As long you as you perform ritualistic (easier) maintenance on it, things will glance off it as it doesn't 'wash off' by normal use as it's high-bond to the last real top-coat.  It's entirely sacrificial though, despite marketing and I think that's where it's downfall lies.  Approx 2-5 yrs with care and normal use. 

The automotive ones are 9H(Wolff-Wilborn scale), meaning anything harder than a 9H pencil lead is going to win over the coating.  You deeply scratch it, you dent your autobody/wood, it'll probably conform a bit but that'll become the open weak spot.  You leave a pH solution on it long enough, it'll still eat through.

So...  you're not going to do spot repairs with this.  Each of the 'wood' ones comes with maintenance spray which from the blacktail SDS is literally 'Vehicle waterless wash'.  That's mostly an emulsifier that'll carry dirt and other surfactants you don't want sitting too long on it.  When you eventually eat through that layer, it's a sanding job as you'd need Rubio/wood to apply Rubio.  Lacquer/wood to apply lacquer.  Nothing really sticks well to the ceramic coats, which is the point.

Edit: any reputable autobody shop would ask you up front what your maintenance schedule for your car is... whether you're babying it and prepared to lightly wash it by hand every week and not using a car-wash... if not, they're not going to suggest ceramic coating to you.  Same thing should have applied to woodworking.