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[Sam Longley 1Participant @samlongley1]

Posted by Clive Hartland on 10/12/2017 09:12:38:

Sam, if you are going to make your own shellac then you will need some clear Meth. spirit too.

After dissolving the shellac it will need filtering, for this I use muslin cloth, you may need to filter twice to get rid of small hard bits.

Clive

Yes , fair point. 1 KG makes about 4 litres of shellac less any waste & that uses £ 30-00 of meths on top of the cost of the flakes.

In my joinery days I employed a polisher who was the fussiest old boy under the sun. If i ordered white button polish he would want brown. if i ordered Colron dye he would want Rustins & so on. In the end I used to send him to the supplier to get the stuff himself & let him get on with it.

So in the winter last year when my yacht club asked if i could polish a table top ( ended up it is going to be about 20 by the end of this winter) I realised that I could not remember how to do it. So i had to go through an embarrassing rapid re learning process. When I hit the fish eye problem I had to really search the memory bank to remember that one has to overcoat the stain with shellac to seal the silicons in. These are still in the wood from years of wax polishing even though I have stripped the entire tables back to bare wood without any strippers etc. Only scrappers & sandpaper.

I have just finished building some lounge seating & rather stupidly offered to upholster them using old sails. Not sure if they will go for that, but if they do i might be in trouble because the last time I did that was as a teenager !! That will really exercise the brain.

No wonder the traction engine build is going slow !!!!!

Sorry to Hijack the thread

[Chris Taylor 3Participant @christaylor3]

Thanks to everyone for the advice. (I don't think I'll go the shellac route!)

[Tim StevensParticipant @timstevens64731]

In he UK, the alcohol you need to dissolve the Shellac is made to stink of pyridine, and is unpleasant to work with over any period. My answer is to visit a French DIY store when there, and buy their equivalent 'alcohol a bruler'. This tends to have a much nicer smell, as it is made from excess brandy production, and smells like it.

While in the shop, you can stock up on other solvents in litre bottles, such as naptha, methanol, and acetone, useful for lots of things not connected with marking fluid or shellac.

Cheers, Tim

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