Is Varathane Diamond Wood Finish Safe for Baby Toys

Today virtually every finish is safe once cured. Lead has been banned for decades, pigments used are considered safe.

If you are not convinced, use shellac. It is used to coat fills and other foods so toys are not a problem.

Ed Pawlowski wrote in news:_KI1A.94432$ snipped-for-privacy@fx07.iad:

Just out of curiosity, does food-grade shellac have any special requirements? Do you have to use a food-grade alcohol to dissolve the flakes or is standard denatured alcohol good enough?

Puckdropper

I'm still not convinved. After talking to a chemist friend of mine, I might drink water or milk out of a wooden mug with a poly or other manufactured finish, but I sure wouldn't drink orange or tomato juice or anything with acid or alcohol in it

Since I doubt the kid will be drinking alcohol, that's a good solution. But even there I'd make the stuff from flakes because I don't know what Zinnser puts in their premixed stuff to keep it usable for so long.

I think your main concern is sanitation/free from organisms (a concern since it comes from india)

There is a bleached dewaxed powdered shellac that is derived by percipitation. There is powdered shellac produced by dissolving the raw material in industrial alcohol (nearly 100%)and filtered. Then there are the flakes which are produced by the alcohol method. The fact that the shellac is refined using alcohol, then put in alcohol solution by the end user makes me think that it would be germ free. I personally have no qualms about handling the stuff. It fells pretty natural.

That's why they make glass and ceramics to drink from

Leaded glass and glaze? ;-)

.. from Lee Valley : We buy orange shellac in 50 kilogram jute bags, the standard export package of Indian suppliers. For those who don't know, shellac is made from the secretions of the lac bug (Laccifer lacca). Most shellac is gathered in India, where it is picked (by hand) from deposits left by the lac bug in plum trees. We find many interesting items (besides random bug parts) in our shellac when we repackage it. Sometimes there is a feather or two, an empty match box, or scraps of paper. But the most interesting find was the cigarette butt shown at the lower left hand corner. It is a hand-rolled leaf held together with a white thread. Among the Hmars, a tribe in the northeastern Indian states (where lac bugs abound), the color of the thread used to wrap a cigarette plays a special role in courtship. Green or blue symbolize reciprocated affection; red stands for rejection and white is neutral - a "wait-and-see" color. Apparently, the cigarette that excites a Hmar man most is wound with a hair from a woman's own head; this indicates unequivocal acceptance of the suitor's approach and the promise of undying love. Ah, yes, the untold stories in a bag of shellac! L.L.

I would only use shellac , period!!!

Shellac is used by the pharma industry to coat pills, so they slide down easier, that and carnuba wax.

So Shellac is about as friendly as it gets.

Larry Blanchard wrote in news:o27n35$6ji$1 @gioia.aioe.org:

Hmmm. I'm not sure poly varnishes are going to be worse than a plastic cup or plastic water bottle. Given the recent concerns about PET plastics, varnish may actually be safer.

John

ow whether you would use varethane diamond wood finish on toys made for bab ies, assuming that they would be biting, sucking, and chewing on them a lot . If your answer is no, what finish would you use?

I have used shellac on many a child's toy, for exactly this reason. Howeve r, depending on the toy and the level of finish you're looking for, you mi ght also consider simple mineral oil. Mineral Oil is and has been the Bu tcher Block's & Cutting Board's finish forever. I do all of the baby block s I make in mineral oil, especially since they're just going to be chucked around anyway. Also then, all it will take is a quick sand and another coat if they need refreshing (which is clearly... never!) Good luck!

re : homemade wooden baby toys

If I follow your logic - - We might be poisoning our babies with plastics anyway, why bother to look for the safest wood finish. Geeesh. John T.

yes and i wonder if doris knows shellac is made out of bugs from india

do the babies have teeth yet if not then they cannot actually eat the wood and finish

if they have teeth then just use mineral oil

send some emails to manufacturers of wooden baby products or just look at their site

I suspect we're poisoning ourselves with a lot of modern industrial pollutants, which we've been doing at least since the Romans invented lead water pipe.

That's no reason to ignore the ones we can easily eliminate.

snipped-for-privacy@ccanoemail.ca wrote in news:8vcg4c9icshtntd4sulj47i8cdp15i26rj@

Wow, talk about taking an extreme leap.

No, the point here is to not go off the deep end (as you seem to have done). If you think plastics are unsafe, then you probably don't want varnish either. If you think plastics are safe, then you're being a bit illogical to immediately decide varnish isn't.

FWIW, when I made baby toys (some 20 years ago), I just left the wood bare. Solved the problem (*).

John

(* actually it doesn't, you need to be careful what woods you use if baby can chew them. I mostly used maple)

.. perfect - we now agree - about no finish - I hope the OP isn't applying some poly floor finish to the baby toys .. because little Buford likes to chew plastics anyways .. John T.