November 25, 2007

Local Company Makes its Mark
Abatron products playing key role in restoration projects

By Deneen Smith
Kenosha News

From the Statue of Liberty to the federal courthouse building in Milwaukee to aging Victorian houses near Kenosha's lakefront, Abatron Inc. is making a mark. Albeit an invisible one.

Abatron is a Kenosha-based chemical company that develops, manufactures and markets adhesives and coatings for specialty users.

And although the company began in the 1950s as the manufacturer of coatings used largely for industrial users, a chance meeting at a trade show led founder John Caporaso to invent compounds that could be used in the restoration of wood.

Those products are now a key component of the company's business.

Their products WoodEpox and LiquidWood Restore are currently being used to restore the roughly 650 100-year-old windows in the historic federal courthouse building in down town Milwaukee and will soon be used in restoring widows in the Statue of Liberty.

"We were at a trade show in Chicago, and we happened to meet people from the National Trust for Historic Preservation," said Marsha Caporaso, vice president of the company (pictured left).

She said her husband John talked to the director of the trust, who said he was looking for a product that would help them save crumbling wood in historic buildings. The director said he was hopeful of finding a product that could be used in an upcoming historic preservation workshop for the trust.

"John loves to develop products; he's a scientist," Caporaso said. "So he developed products to the specifications of the workshop."

One of the products John Caporaso developed, LiquidWood, penetrates crumbling wood and bonds its fibers. It then hardens to restore the wood to a tough surface that can be sawed, nailed and painted just like regular wood.

WoodEpox is a shrink-resistant putty that can be used to repair wood that has missing pieces or cracks.

That was in the 1980s. The product line has now grown to include a series of restoration products, including moldmaking and casting compounds that are used to reproduce architectural details, such as terra cotta decorations on historic buildings.

Caporaso said restoration companies use the products to save historic structures. But she said homeowners and local contractors use the products as well.

"You need to think about what is cost effective," she said, saying that restoring windows and other architectural features in older structures is usually far less expensive than replacing them. "The aesthetics are a very important consideration too."

Pictured right: Richard Ahlstrom of Abatron mixes a LiquidWood product that restores soft, spongy or rotted wood. (Kenosha News photo by Brian Passino)

In addition to wood restoration products, Abatron makes specialized products for concrete restoration and repair, for porcelain refinishing, metal restoration and stone care.

Concrete floor coatings are a growing market for the company, with protective and non-slip coatings for large industrial users and decorative coatings made to resemble stone or terrazzo for homes and businesses.

The company also continues to make industrial products that were its focus when Abatron was created in the 1950s.

Caporaso said her husband, who now acts as chairman of the board while she runs day-to-day operations, launched Abatron in Illinois. The company moved to the Business Park of Kenosha in 1994.