[Tommy Plumb]

A couple years ago I painted some of the window frames on my house. I scraped off all the old loose paint taking much of it down to bare wood. Then I sanded and primed with Sherwin Williams exterior oil based primer. The primer took an abnormally long time to try, a few days before it was totally dry to the touch. I gave it about two weeks before painting with Sherwin Williams exterior paint, a white Semi-Gloss. Now half of one of those window frames has the paint coming off in sheets. Everything else is fine, just that one half a frame has the paint peeling badly.
Should I do anything special or just scrape, sand, prime and paint?

 

[chrisn]

Was the wood dry before priming? It sounds like you did all the right prep but there must have been moisture involved.

 

[Tommy Plumb]

It's been a long time so I could be wrong. I believe I gave it a few hot sunny days to dry out before I primed it. It's strange that it seems to be just this one piece of wood. Their are other spots coming off but that is due to the old paint I painted over failing. Those are little flecks though, this is whole sheets of paint coming off.

 

[BMDealer]

Sounds like moisture.......the east coast has been wet for pretty much the month of June. Generally when the primer fails and peels down to the wood it can be traced back to moisture. As far as dry time for the primer this again is effected by the climate.....if its rains or gets cool in the evenings it can stop drying. We had a gentleman stain a deck with oil and called wondering why it didn't dry quickly but our evenings at that time were still in the 30's to low 40's which extended the dry time by days.

 

[Justabottle]

All the Alkyd/Oils sold on the east coast are low VOC and will take a LONG time to dry/cure.

Basically all the drying solvents have been reduced to meet current clean air standards. Two weeks is not unheard of.

You did everything right but unfortunately moisture will win. Once you have a peeling problem it is very tough to solve, especially windows.

If it were me next time I would use an acrylic bonding primer and and acrylic topcoat. An all acrylic system will allow the wood to breathe and let the moisture escape without peeling.