WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH SILICONE?
Silicone is a main ingredient of virtually all vinyl or plastic products we know of. One of the most popular even states on the front of its bottle that is has "No Oil Based Silicone" but uses a water based silicone emulsion instead. Silicone is cheap, is great for binding ingredients in a formula and works a treat at darkening plastics and vinyls. However, it's not ideal to use in formulas for a number of reasons:
- It's greasy and attracts dust for a long time after you use it.
- Oil based silicone emulsions use petroleum distillates that attack the vinyls' surface, leading to its failure.
- It builds up on the vinyl surface, accelerating damage from heat, leading again to premature surface failure.
- A very poor UV protectant, amplifying the suns effect, by magnifying the UV rays rather than dissipating them.
So we created our formula with zero silicone of any type. Something that took many years to get to work, and work well enough to appease the fussiest enthusiasts out there.