SOMEBODY left a full quart can of Zinzer's shellac in a precarious and metastable position in my shop. Gravity won, the lid failed.
Now I've got a quart of shellac on the linoleum floor in my small shop, which has sat a day or two. I've soaked up all the still-liquid phase that I can, but there's a big mess of tacky to dried shellac.
Aside from the obvious solution (pun?) of soaking the spill in alcohol, is there a better way?
Any help appreciated.
-Zz
If you properly apply the solvent to yourself you won't give a damn about the shellac.
Regards,
Tom Watson
i twied 'dat. it dudn't sheem to work good. the shop spins too much.
Funny. my FAV radio station is playing "I'll hold the bottle, you hold the wheel".
Currently "Hard Country". Next: "Roclin' and Stompin'"
The first thing I'd try is to let it dry completely and then use a cabinet scraper with a very slight hook to chip it off the lino. It shouldn't have soaked in...
After that, I'd use denatured ethyl to dissolve it and mop it up. Full ventilation, with fan(s) running.
This is where you take advantage of the situation. It's a great excuse to buy yourself a MultiMax tool and put some of it's scrapers to work.
Buy a new shop floor.
While you're at it, put a new shop on top of that new floor.
Put some new tools in it, too.
Hope this helps,
jc
It didn't, really.
It was intended as humor. :-)
I haven't tried this, but since ammonia is also a solvent for shellac, I wonder if some of the ammonia based floor cleaners might work?
I haven't tried this, but sonce ammonia is also a solvent for shellac, I wonder if some of the ammonia based floor cleaners might work?
Acetone can disolve linolem as fast as it can disolve Shelac - forewarned is fore-armed.
Either you're talking about some mysterious synthetic "shellac" or you're dealing with liquid shellac that's already dissolved in alcohol (taking advantage of the fact that alcohol is miscible in acetone), otherwise I'd have to take issue with that statement.
I spent many years messing around with automotive and marine finishing products, and in that time I'd concluded that acetone and/or lacquer thinner were the granddaddy of all finishing solvents. Except for some of the fancier catalyzed polyurethane or epoxies, you could even use acetone to dissolve and remove most other cured finishes. I kept copious amounts of lacquer thinner around the shop; there was no job it couldn't tackle! That is, until I started turning my attention towards woodworking.
There'd been a few pieces of old furniture I'd tried to strip and refinish, first with lacquer thinner, then with various paint strippers when the lacquer thinner didn't work. What the hell; why won't this crap come off?! I still remember the day (on probably my third piece of old furniture, when faced with resorting to sandpaper AGAIN) that I realized this was no ordinary finish, this was shellac! When I began to apply a generous helping of denatured alcohol, the heavens parted, the light shone down upon the workpiece, and the shellac was melted away. Hallelujah! Is there nothing alcohol can't do? :-)
Incidentally, I was on my way out to the shop when I read your post, and thinking maybe I'd lost my mind again I decided to drop a small chunk of garnet shellac into a jar of acetone. After an hour and a half... nothing.
Also, if the floor really IS linoleum (unlikely, but possible) there's asphalt in it, and acetone will hurt the floor. Maybe it's really vinyl flooring...
Instead of dissolving quick, you might consider dissolving agents that don't evaporate or create a fire hazard. Start with some alcohol, then quickly pour a little glycerine on it. Glycerine is a heavy alcohol, it (eventually) dissolves most things that are alcohol-soluble, but it doesn't evaporate in minutes, so you can wipe it up at leisure. Some cellulose-type cat litter spread on the oily glycerine gunk, then moved around and swept up, can be a good cleaning strategy.
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