Nova USA Wood Products LLC.Reviews of novausawood.com

Response from Nova USA Wood Products LLC.May 7, 2026

We are sorry to hear about the negative experience you had with our Apitong oil product. We are unable to find your order in our system. Please reach out to us at the email below and let us know your order number or the name/company name you ordered under. We would like to find out what went wrong and how to resolve this for you. [email protected]

Response from Nova USA Wood Products LLC.Apr 22, 2025

Hi Tracy. We are sorry to hear about your experience with ExoShield Clear. As the product designer and one of the owners of Nova, I have many years of experience with ExoShield on a variety of woods including TigerWood. I have personally used our ExoShield on a TigerWood exterior dining table with southern exposure here in Portland, OR. The results I got were outstanding, and with the exception of cleaning of the table with a light wipe down every few months, I was able to get 3 years before I finally decided to do a full sand and recoat. However, TigerWood is an exceptionally difficult wood to finish. First of all, it tends to get mill glaze from planing; basically the knives used to plane it down from rough beat down and compress the cells right at the wood's surface - this prevents any finish from properly penetrating into the material. TigerWood should be sanded and then water popped before finishing. You really need dry weather for at least a week before and after finishing. We have had more failures of ExoShield reported on TigerWood than any other species of wood. Be sure to sand down your deck in order to open up the wood cells prior to refinishing. And be sure to wipe down to remove any sanding dust. Good luck on your project. Also, we do take returns - just send us an email and we'll walk you through the process.

Response from Nova USA Wood Products LLC.Dec 5, 2024

Hi Victoria, I understand your frustrations with our product, and I apologize that the results were not as expected. At no point during our discussion did I blame you for improper application. I asked questions about your application method and preparation to understand the situation further, and figure out why you have had sub optimal results on your deck. You asked me how to rectify the problem, and to do so I needed to figure out what may have gone wrong. With the information I gained from our discussion and the pictures you sent, I provided you with the following conclusions about the situation. This looks to be a penetration issue. The stain was not able to penetrate the wood effectively, and the longevity of the product was compromised in the areas where there was UV exposure, foot traffic, and direct exposure to weathering. I thought this may have happened for a few different reasons: 1. When asked if the deck was sanded and cleaned before application, you responded that you “waited six months to allow the wood to dry” and the “Deck was properly readied for application”. This gave me no indication of what was actually done for preparation, other than letting it dry for 6 months. So I mentioned that it is important to remove any grime, buildup and mildew that is visible on the surface of the wood before application and that this deck would benefit greatly from a sanding. This cleaning and sanding process will aid in stain penetration. 2. Based on the pictures you provided me, the wood looked to be splitting in many areas. There are variations between late/early wood, and heart/sapwood throughout the deck. This is a quality of wood issue which is common in pressure treated (PT) Pine. What this means is that the density of the wood is changing drastically throughout the surface of the deck, and in turn, the amount of stain that can penetrate and absorb into the wood is inconsistent throughout each board. Some areas of the deck may have received better protection than others, as they were able to absorb differing amounts of stain. Imagine you had a new car and you left it outside for 6 months. And then you decided to wax the vehicle before doing any washing whatsoever. What do you think would be the result? Any other stain product would perform similarly if not worse provided the prep conditions were held the same. I wish you the best of luck with your future stain projects, and am sorry to hear that it will not be using ExoShield. Thank you, Teddy Christou