“UV bathtub refinishing… the talk of the town, the holy grail, the proverbial black eye, the history making event that has marked 2010″.

What it should be called is the “refinishers money pit of despair”.

THE HISTORY

2009, A Florida based company releases the availability of a new process for bathtub refinishing. This process is called UV in which the coating is cured instantly with a high intensity light. This process sounds promising as it is sold as a “green” system. This system came with a heavy price tag… around $2500 for a curing system and around $140 a gallon for the coating itself.

This system also came with another heavy price tag… many who invested into this process were met with failure. Now, we can go around saying the coating system was flawed or we can say it was error on behalf of the applicator but why should we? The process should have been thoroughly field tested and idiot proofed before presented to refinishers.

REASON

The bathtub refinishing industry is one of question due to past failures. It is hard enough to prove to the public that this is an industry that can be trusted, and adding to this failure rate only decreases this trust and makes it harder for a professional bathtub refinisher to make a living.

THE PRESTIGE

A San Antonio based Association, realizes the potential of this Florida based company’s error of judgment and begins capitalizing by marketing their own UV coating and curing system combination. They use the phrase “black eye” to define this Florida based company’s attempt. Here is a snippet from their blog:

“Prior to our technology the only way to perform UV refinishing was a tedious and laborious task of applying thin white base coats then curing them individually. The process was repeated three or four times and finally finished out by applying a UV Clear Coat. This proved to be a horribly flawed system with failings in the base coat adhesion plus the clear coat not adhering to the base coat.

This gave this wonderful technology a huge black eye and has many bathtub refinshers shying away from this great technology only because it was not properly introduced”.

THEIR CLAIM

The San Antonio based Association claims to have made history by coming up with a combined UV light and coating system that was specifically matched through extensive research and development. The lighting system is said to be the UV refinishers dream because it is ultra portable and matched to the coating system eliminating the need for the 75 lb unit sold by competitors. Here is a snippet from their main site:

“Our coatings were formulated and tested with our state of the art hand held lights that are truly unique since they do not require a refinisher to be tethered to 75 pound transformer. Our system was formulated from the ground up making us truly unique”.

THE TRUTH

After a year of so-called field testing, you would have figured that they knew, like the back of their hand, the lighting system that was developed and matched specifically for them (so they claim) which by the way was also used and tested by their “Fortune 500 Company” coatings producer.

Well, surprise! these so called “matched” curing units were flawed and it was a well known issue all along and you can’t say that after a year of extensive testing, that they didn’t know this. Refinishers were duped into buying this system only to have their curing system fail, some within minutes of start-up. Some of these curing units I have heard tale of catching on fire! Mind you, these curing systems were sold for $900 – $1200 a piece making it a very expensive investment. On top of that, the lighting manufacturer who produced this curing system refuses to honor replacement with the following excuse… They were not started up properly.

The San Antonio based Association is charging $3000 for the combined curing system/coating set-up plus an association fee of $300 plus! That is a lot of money to ask just to be left holding the bag with a faulty unit and a refusal to replace it. Who is giving UV a BLACK EYE now?

MY OPINION

I think this system needs to be put to rest until all the snags and bugs are worked out before someone gets hurt and when I say hurt, I mean physically and/or financially. This economy is too rough to be using refinishers as guinea pigs for the UV BATHTUB REFINISHING FAT CAT goals. What do you think?