About three years ago my honey and I decided to add some outdoor signage to our property. We used white pine as the boards for the signs and I did the shaping, routing, and (minor) carving of them. She did the painting of the routed and carved areas with acrylics.

Since we planned to leave these signs in the elements year round, we wanted to give them some protection from those elements. We chose the spray cans of Minwax Helmsman Spar Urethane Clear Satin Spray for this task. In this review I will try to explain why.

Minwax Helmsman Spar Urethane Clear Satin Spray

There is more than one reason we generally use Minwax products. One, of course, is its wide availability. It gets lots of shelf space in many stores from the big boxes to paint specialty stores. The other reason is we find their products to be as good or better as any. The price points are fair as well.

For an outdoor application of wood protection you need a couple of things in your clear finish. One is weather resistance. The word spar in this product says it is built for the outdoors. Spar varnish was originally formulated for coating the spars of sailing vessels. You can't get much more outdoors than that. When you want the color under the finish to stay bright you also need ultraviolet inhibitors. This one has them. You also want high polyurethane content to reduce the number of coats needed and, therefore, the cost of finishing. For smaller projects a can of pressurized spray makes sense. It can get expensive for larger ones.

This met our needs and we sprayed five coats of the satin finish on the signs. Like any craft, using a spray can or spray gun takes some practice. We find that with good even strokes this finish goes on well with minimal sags and runs. There is plenty of overspray so remember that when you are outside using it. That is where you should be as the spray is toxic. Each coat dries pretty quickly. We scuff sanded each coat, except the last, with 440 grit wet-or-dry silicon carbide paper lubricated with paint thinner after about two hours. We used five coats since we put each coat on thinly to prevent the sags and runs that often come when spraying surfaces with lots of indentations.

We just went out this last Monday (a nice day at home) and inspected the signs. After three years they are showing signs of wear but the colors are still bright and the coating is intact. They won't need stripping and recoating for at least another year. Like other Minwax products we have used, Minwax Helmsman Spar Urethane Clear Satin Spray is doing what it should do for us.


Recommended: Yes