[?] Painting or replacing antique-pine cupboard doors.

[Stuart Noble]

Known as French polish. Any decent wood finish supplier, like

[Andy Dingley]

It has been available ready-disssolved since the Victorian era. However it doesn't store as well in that state, so buy it from somewhere with a good turnover. Screwfix do a decent one ("button" is a bit lighter colour). Shellac is a complicated subject. There are lots of varieties, lots of qualities and a huge number of techniques.

For our initial purposes, you need Screwfix's finest cheapy and a medium-quality artist's _watercolour_ brush with _synthetic_ (Golden Taklon) bristles (most of the high-street "bookshops for the illiterate" chains).Try a 3/4" or 1/2" filbert. Don't clean it afterwards, just wipe it clean and soften it before use next time with a splash of meths. You'll need plentry of meths too, best clear rather than purple and ideally as non-stenched industrial meths, but the stuff from the camping shop is fine too.

You can wipe it on too, but I wouldn't bother unless you want to learn french polishing. Even so, you should start with a brush coat for the first one, to get those internal corners around mouldings.

Screwfix shellac is, like most, still waxy. It works better if you leave the bottles to stand for a week or two and then pour off the top

2/3rd into a separate bottle and use only that for finishing. The bottom 1/3rd looks like old instant coffee and has a creamy opaqueness to it. This is the particularly waxy component. Keep it and use it for sanding sealer on jobs like this one, on bare timber for rough work, as a friction polish for lathework, or as knotting under paint. The waxy shellac doesn't give such a good final finish, but it does sand better. Your first portion of "dewaxed" shellac also keeps better in liquid storage.

For an initial coating, use Screwfix's diluted 50:50 with meths. This gives a better coating and dries more quickly. You'll probably use a lot of shellac that's extra-diluted, but you need to practice and get the feel of it. One of the reasons for dissolving your own is simply so that you can accurately control this dilution.

Every workshop should have some ready-dissolved shellac in it. Handy stuff for all sorts of purposes.

[David Chapman]

Very many thanks for taking the time to provide such a comprehensive answer to my posting. Your help is much appreciated.

ATB - David.

David C.Chapman - Chartered Engineer. FIEE. ( [e-mail])

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