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Stop Loss Bags: A Better Package Design Solution for Wood Finishes

By Rain Noe - November 10, 2014

in Furniture Design | Hand Tools

In our daily lives, we live with such lousy package design solutions. A tube is a terrible way to store toothpaste, and when was the last time you got the last drop out of a bottle of lotion or shampoo? In addition to the user experience issues, there's the sheer wastefulness of plastic bottles that we use once and then throw in the recycling, still caked with residue. And when it comes to storing wood finishes, an even worse package design than bottles is cans. Here's a can of wood finish left behind by the previous tenant of my current apartment:

I was excited to find it--then disappointed to see he hadn't sealed the lid properly, the lip clogged as it is with poured finish. What a waste.

In the There's got to be a better way! mindset I dug around and found a company called Finishing Solutions, which makes a product called Stop Loss Bags:

A doypack for storing finishes is a much better idea for both storing and dispensing, though I have to admit the business with the funnel looks like a PITA.

If anything, I wish a Dupont or a MinWax would hear about these guys, buy up the company, kick their can suppliers to the curb and start selling new finishes in these doypacks. The power tools we use to work wood get better every few years, so it seems absurd that we're still dispensing finishes the same way we did fifty years ago.

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Rob Wilkey

10 years ago

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I really like the idea. I've had entire gallons of finish go south on me because the metal lid was too dented and dinged up from use and the seal wouldn't hold. Also, a plastic bag is easier to clean off when you inevitably dribble a little bit of finish over the edge.

Issues like that are actually part of the reason I switched to using cyanoacrylate as my finish of choice for turned projects. I hardly have to use any, so moving around the containers is easy... it almost never goes bad... and mainly: its easy to open and reseal quickly between coats!
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Dodd

10 years ago

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I don't know what the plastic is that they are made of, but I've used these bags for some time now and they do keep oil based finishes fresh for more than a year. In fact, I just finished off the tail end of some polyurethane that was a year and a half old.
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dodd

10 years ago

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For the record, guys, I've used these bags for some time now and, whatever the plastic is that they are made of, the finish remains fresh for over a year.
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Tom Mc

10 years ago

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Organic sugar does not contain volatile solvents, is inert to packaging materials, and requires much different barrier properties.

Those are not transfusion bags; those are typically made of an RF-welded PVC material...these are made of multi-web flexible films (pre-laminated) and converted to a gusseted pouch. That fitment is nothing more than a small injection-molded PP finish that is sealed into the bag top with heat.

Its a great little structure for juice drinks and possibly - short term storage of paints and the like. You would never want it in there long-term.
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Nick

10 years ago

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Those look like transfusion bags(?)
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Frenchfarmer

10 years ago

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Well now, well now.
You can buy Organic sugar in those very same bags and just put it in a nice crock jar or whatever and, seeing as you are a woodworker, make a stand out of offcuts and healthier and sorted.
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Tom Mc

10 years ago

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There's a reason solvent-based finishes are one of the last hold-outs in metal can packaging. It has to do with permeability of plastic films (yes, plastic is porous, contrary to popular belief) and how the contents of such a pouch would break down the different layers (including the adhesive layers) within such a lamination. The solution would be to weld a structure together, likely with RF but that would not be possible with the metallized (or more likely - foil) layer you would need to halt the transmission of vapor from the light solvents in the product.

Not to mention, if I were to buy a pouch of finish, I'd have to do a good job at both keeping the nozzle clean as well as having a place to pour it to dip a brush in it.

There's always room for innovation but bear in mind your packaging frustrations don't exist because people don't care or are too lazy. They are usually because to do it differently does not make financial sense. If and when that happens (and it does as the industry evolves like anything else) is when you start seeing changes. Bag-in-box, aka airless dispensing when it's in a smaller vehicle, happened for precisely this reason. That's why most high-end lotions come in a wide mouth jar or airless dispenser pump - the cost of the product is too high to justify the waste with conventional packaging.

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