There’s been a nasty little rumor floating around about DuraCoat® for the past 15 years. What is this rumor? DuraCoat® has been said to be repackaged Sherwin Williams Polane® T. Could such a thing be true? Well, NIC Industries, the makers of Cerakote™, would like you to believe it’s true. They recently released a document with an analysis comparing DuraCoat® and Polane® T.
In this document, Cerakote™ makes the claim that the “fingerprint” of DuraCoat® is “nearly identical” and has a “high probability that the two samples are the same material.” Unfortunately it appears as though Cerakote™ did not release the entire lab report and only released a document they created in-house with the lab’s graphs, which leaves many questions unanswered.
Is DuraCoat® just repackaged Polane® T? Of course not. That would be ridiculous and easily identifiable to anyone who has used that coating. What is true is that DuraCoat® is a two-part, air-cured urethane. Sherwin Williams Polane® T is also a two-part, air-cured urethane. Urethanes have similar components and similar compositions. That’s what makes them urethanes. Certain chemicals and certain ingredients create certain types of coatings. What makes urethane coatings different from each other is the exact composition, the percentage of each ingredient, additional ingredients to change certain properties of the coating, the order of the steps taken during manufacture, and a multitude of other things.
Many coating manufacturers create urethanes and they will obviously show similar results when compared using the FTIR analysis, but they will have subtle differences. The results released by Cerakote™ show that DuraCoat® and Polane® T are similar, as would be expected, but also that they are clearly different.
This “fingerprint” discussion is interesting when you apply it to the FTIR analysis we had an independent lab conduct on Cerakote™ H-Series. The lab’s analysis found that Cerakote’s “fingerprint” was nearly identical to the “fingerprint” of an epoxy coating. DuraCoat® tested similar to a urethane coating, because it is a urethane coating. That is in stark contrast to Cerakote™ testing most similar to an epoxy when they claim it is ceramic-based. You can read the blog post and view the entire lab analysis on Cerakote™ by clicking here.
If you go to a Sherwin Williams store, purchase Polane® T, and spray it on your gun, it will not be the same as applying DuraCoat®. It will not have the same user-friendly characteristics that DuraCoat® is known for. It won’t smell the same, it won’t look the same, it won’t spray the same. It won’t be available in specialty colors such as fluorescents or metallics. You won’t have options such as DuraPearl or DuraVelvet Top Coat, or find products such as DuraBlue™ Spray-On Bluing. And, it most definitely will not be available in an aerosol.
A lab test showing that the chemicals appear similar between the two only shows that DuraCoat® is a urethane, which we have never claimed otherwise. This recent release of information is just another marketing ploy by a company that continuously reports unrepeatable testing results and makes unsubstantiated claims in an attempt to make their product appear better than ours. It is as simple as that.
