Al Kidd talks to alkyds. Polly Mertz could hear him yelling in the lab across the hall from her lab. “Come on resin, I don’t have all day,” Al was admonishing his 3-liter resin reactor, as if the individual resin intermediate oligomers mixing in the setup could hear his ranting. His frustration was that he had slightly miscalculated the amount of time it would take to reach the final acid number endpoint for his resin synthesis, and he was clearly ready to go home.
Al had gotten his start in the coatings industry synthesizing alkyd resins for Big Time Paint Company. Each alkyd can be tailored to certain properties in a coating by changing the diacids, diols and oils in the resin. And now, since Al had learned about Polly’s project to develop a new alkyd, he was constantly sticking his head in Polly’s office to offer advice about the joys and intricacies of alkyd resins. Polly wasn’t so sure how seriously to take advice from a man that talked to alkyds.