Shellac How To Make Food Safe Wood Finish Video

today i'm going to show you how to take this and make your own shellac finish at home [Music] hi i'm kent and welcome to turn a wood bowl today i'm going to show you how to make your own shellac finish now i realize when you hear that you might be thinking why in the world would i want to make my own shellac finish i know this stuff is in the stores i can buy at the hardware store there's a can of it sitting there i can just go get it why do i want to make it well if you make your own shellac and you compare that to the product that's available on the shelf at the store you're going to see a big difference two things you're going to see a difference in is the different amount of components that are added to that product on the shelf there's lots of different things are added to make it last on the shelf preservatives chemicals things of that nature also the clarity of that the product that you can make at home the clarity of that product is far superior than what you're going to buy at the store and it has to do with that preservatives and all the additives have been added to that product so instead of doing that and going to the store and buying a pre-made can i'm going to show you how to make your own shellac today so let's come in here closer and take a look at how this is made and later i'm going to tell you why this is so important to have on hand if you're a wood turner so here's the really cool thing about making your own shellac is you only need two ingredients you need denatured alcohol and you need shellac flakes now the shellac flakes i will have a link in the description below you can order these you can order these and have them delivered right to you the cool thing about the shellac flakes is these are all natural these come from indonesia and india and they are basically a resin extract from a bug that lives in certain trees the bug basically makes these casings or these drippings that go down the trees that that are harvested and they're purified and they're filtered and then they're laid out in sheets and they're cracked apart it's almost like it's almost looks like candy there's just little flakes the other thing to know is that these come in different colors this is blonde there is there are some darker colors as well there's amber there's garnett and there's like brown and reddish colors they get a little bit darker but i like the blonde it works really well now the way this works is we're going to cut the flakes so these flakes will be dissolved in the denatured alcohol but we have to cut them at a certain proportion now the thinner you cut it the thinner the shellac will be and it will it'll be less viscous so it will be thin and it'll run very quickly i'm going to make what's called a one pound cut that's relatively thin it's going to be very thin shellac you can make this thicker the way this works is there's going to be one pound of flakes to one gallon of denatured alcohol well obviously we're not going to make a whole gallon of this and i i also highly recommend to just make what you're going to use over maybe the next month or so and i'm basically only going to make a cup here so the proportion of this is eight ounces eight ounces of denatured alcohol to one ounce of shellac flakes for a one pound cut now if you want to know all the ratios and all that go to my website at turnawoodbull.com forward slash shellac and that's going to give you all the information go ahead and read that article and down there you'll see a grid that has all of the cut formulas for the different the different cuts of mixing the shellac with the denatured alcohol first thing we're going to do is i'm going to zero out the scale you're going to need a scale i'll go ahead and zero that out with the container on the scale so you want to make sure the container is there and it's reading zero and i have this set to ounces right now and i'm going to basically just add these in until i get an ounce of flakes in the container there's seven tenths of an ounce eight tenths there's one ounce of shellac flakes right there so again this is going to be a one pound cut which is one ounce of shellac flakes to eight ounces of denatured alcohol so i have a cup of denatured alcohol that could have been a little more graceful at this point you don't need to weigh it anymore i'm going to just use a little stir stick stir this up a bit and then i'm going to put the lid on i've used um like salsa jars and things like that in the past that have a relatively good seal on them but they're not they're not really designed for really thin liquids and or vapors so i recommend getting something like this it's got a nice rubber rubber ring on it this is a canning jar and it's going to seal it's not going to let that alcohol evaporate also keep in mind you want to do this in a well ventilated place and any rags like this and that you don't want to put them in your regular garbage can you want to get them outside or you want to soak them in water so it neutralizes any of that denatured alcohol because obviously it's flammable so we're going to let this sit overnight and within it within about 24 hours we're going to have really nice shellac here and while that's doing that if you could do me a big favor and click the like button and subscribe to my channel if you aren't already also leave me a comment below let me know if you're using shellac currently if you've ever used it and let me know what your thoughts are and let me know if you've made your own shellac like this so let's let this sit and we'll see what we get in about 24 hours so here it is it's been 24 hours and this is what happens it simply dissolves in the denatured alcohol the shellac flakes dissolve in the denatured alcohol and you've got your own homemade shellac that's super simple and there's no preservatives or additives to it that's going to cloud up your finish and that you really just don't need in the product now you still might be thinking why would i want to make that myself okay obviously it's a better quality product but why do you want to have shellac on hand at all well there's three reasons shellac especially in this form is food safe it's non-toxic it's all natural once that denatured alcohol dissolves when you put it on the surface this is a food safe product secondly it makes a great undercoat well it back up that first point is if this is a finish in and of itself so you can use this as a finish for any surface and just be done with it you can put multiple layers on it sand between those with fine grit sandpaper put another coat on and you've got a finish in and of itself if you would like you can also use this as an underlayment for a high gloss coat so if you want to spray a high gloss lacquer finish what this does is it helps fill in little crevices and if you sand it and then apply another level layer it fills in those crevices and makes the surface really smooth smooth surfaces increases reflectivity and then you get a nice high gloss finish so this is a great product for that so those are the two reasons the third reason which is really the best reason for woodturners to want to have this on hand and readily available which is also a great reason why you make small batches and keep fresh batch on hand is that it can fill in and tighten up loose grain that's tearing out especially in the end grain sometimes you have a wood bowl that may be dryer wood or you might have punky wood where the the wood fibers don't want to cut really smoothly they keep moving around and this acts almost like a glue sometimes you would use ca maybe on a little spot area but if you have the whole ingrained surface of the end of the bowl that's giving you problems you can apply a coat or two of this and what that's going to do it's going to it's going to coat all those end grains basically glue them down and tighten them up so when you come back with a nice sharp tool and you make a nice light cut you're just going to be cutting off the tips of those wood fibers instead of tearing them up like they were before so this is a great tool a tool to have in your arsenal to use for bull grain ingrained tear out so that's the reason to have shellac on hand and you're just going to brush this on the simplest way is just to brush it on and believe it or not you don't have to really do much you could use denatured alcohol to clean out the brush i don't even do that i let the brush go ahead and get solid and then when i'm ready to go back in to use this i just kind of stick it in there the shellac with the denatured alcohol in it dissolves the shellac that's on the brush and then the brush becomes pliable again and i'll just use that to brush it on it's very very simple to use almost no cleanup like i said i just set the brush i usually just set it on the lid and just let it dry and then reuse it again next time so really really great product super simple to make easy to make i have the shellac flake links in the description below so check those out and also go to my website forward turnitwoodbowl.com shellac and look up the information there there's a bunch more information plus i have that grid that shows you the exact breakdowns for whatever size you want to make and whatever cut you want to make again this is a one pound cut so it's a thin cut and it'll soak into the wood grain and that's what i usually use is a one pound cut so i hope you enjoyed this video hit that like button subscribe all that good stuff and leave me a comment below let me know if you make your own shellac if you have or if you haven't let me know if you're considering and now that you've seen this video and you see how simple it is it's basically two ingredients so leave me a comment below and i'd love to hear from you and like i always love to say until next time happy turning [Music] you

Channel: Turn A Wood Bowl

Views: 35,038

Rating: 4.9715405 out of 5

Keywords: Shellac How To Make Food Safe Wood Finish Video, shellac, how to make shellac, shellac flakes, food safe, food safe finish, food safe finishes, food safe wood finish, food grade wood finish, all natural wood finish, woodworking finish, woodturning, wood bowl turning, wood bowls, finish, denatured alcohol, wood finish, tearout, endgrain, seal, glue, support, prevent tearout, stop tearout, lacquer, wood turning resin, wood bowl making, Do it yourself, wood finishing, Finishing a bowl

Id: TH5gldZqme8

Length: 10min 24sec (624 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 15 2020