Shellac - so many opinions on the Web - confusing

[Ed' stuff]

Hi folks Can you give me a reason to have shellac in my shop. I bought a gallon of it recently. (Price). You folks are the ones that I trust so let me have it, if needed, in spades.

Ed

[Swingman]

IME, a gallon of shellac sitting on a shelf is going to be mostly wasted.

[Mike G]

You'd have shellac in your shop for the same reason you would have varnish, lacquer, or oils in the shop. When appropriate it is a great finish in itself. It also, in a dewaxed state, makes a great sealer for keeping like based stains, finishes separated or keeping pine knot holes from bleeding through a finish, or just plain sealing.

[SteveC1280]

Shelac has a rather short shelf life, so use it soon.

Remove the 'remove' in my address to e:mail me.

[Edwin Pawlowski]

It has a lot of good properties. I use it on my jigs and fixtures as well as finish on furniture and other projects. It is easily repair. It looks good and give nice depth to the wood. It can be rubbed on.

It is food safe and safe for kids things.

Keep an eye on the shelf life though. Ed

[Bob Bowles]

[Fred the Red Shirt]

The sooner it is used after mixing the better. As mixed shellac ages, the resulting finish gets softer. After a while it won;t really harden, you'll get a gummy finish. Exactly how long it takes for it to go bad (and how bad) will depend on many factors including the moisture content in the mix and the temperature at which it is stored.

IOW, it sounds like you should try out shellac on quite a variety of woods for amny different applications over the next few weeks...

There should be a date on the bottom of the can indicating either, when it was mixed, or when the seller was supposed to remove it from the shelf.

[Larry Jaques]

On 02 Sep 2003 14:17:22 GMT, [e-mail] (SteveC1280) pixelated:

Yeah, like on 175+ of your larger projects in the next 6 to 12 months. (Oops!)

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[Chris Merrill]

I'm just getting started with shellac...and I love it, so far.

However, I would return the gallon (if possible) and buy dewaxed flakes. The shelf life is fairly short (6 months)...with flakes you can mix what you need, when you need it.