Shellac

my opinion about finishing is that you need to pick one or two simple ways to finish your products and just stick with them I mean if you're just a craftsman at home or you're actually making a few production runs stuff to sell to people but you're not doing the big warehouse if don't make it complicated make it easy to repair and simple apply and somewhat dummy proof which is why I like using milk paint with a little oil and wax on top of it or just straight oil and wax on my products and sometimes I don't even use a wax occasionally I will introduce a little bit of shellac and that's what we're going to be talking about today [Music] now slack has kind of a reputation for being Finland that's not really well-deserved because if you have some basic information of what it is of how it works you'll be just fine and basically what you lack is is bug poop well that's what I like to tell the kids but I'm telling you about it they all freak out and stuff like that cuz then you can go on explain yeah and you put that bug poo on your fingernails and fingernail polish that's what gives your fingernail polish that nice shine or have you ever wondered why M&Ms melt in your mouth and on your hands shellac coating you actually bug poo it's not really true it's like is somewhat of a it's an extra mint of the shellac bug and they just collect it they filter and stuff like that you can if filters out the different kind of what they call flakes you can have amber or orange and a lot of that has to do with just the color it's gonna impart to the whatever you're putting on and you can have waxed and D wax and that comes in two importance if you're putting any other finish on top of shellac and it's one of the great things about Sherlock is you can put so many other things on top of it it's a I don't want called a cure-all but it solves a lot of problems with other styles of finishes well anyways you take those flakes and you measure them by weight and then you put a certain number of pounds into a gallon of alcohol nowadays you know I will use denatured alcohol because it's cheap to buy but if you're concerned about the dryer or Kim dryers and chemicals that they putting this here to get it make it poisonous for humans well I mean you can please grain alcohol or moonshine or Everclear or anything like that any alcohol will dissolve it and that's one of the problems that people some people don't like about shellac is because if you put Scotch glass down you got a little leaking around you'll give a little ring in it but it's another great thing about it is because it's easy to repair it dissolves in alcohol so you can count Reid blend it all out so I try now you don't have to mix a whole gallon of the stuff at a time I mean most of us just measure out a little pint or something like that and a lot of us don't even measure it out anymore it used to be you can buy shellac pre-mixed all over the place but for the last 20-30 years really Zen sir has kind of cornered the market they're really the only carriage company that's making it and there's it's I would call it a monopoly but it's a there's some issues with shellac that make it so it's not profitable do you have a whole bunch of companies competing against it because of shelf-life issues because a probably shellac yes it does have a shelf life and there's some question whether that's six months a year three years five years whatever but I have found that you know this stuff I keep in my bottles if I don't use it fairly quickly it's better off on just tossing and grab some new stuff because it doesn't dry as fast it doesn't dry as hard if I Reese and it kind of gums up on the sandpaper whereas if it's really fresh you know you can read beats and me in five or ten minutes right after your paya that's one of the great things about it is because what's the alcohol evaporates it's cured but if it's past the expiration date it doesn't cure great and I think that's been the main issues cuz people by canning the stuff are down on this stuff and they won't use a whole thing right away they I mean they're just making a little box I just use a few ounces of it and then he just sits until they make another box I mean you just done by I very rarely buy anything more than these what is it quart 32 ounce one quart things cuz even as much as I use shellac I don't use it that quickly and just I mean it replenishes in fact I write whenever I open these I will squirt some blocks of gin in there just to be sure and I only use them in these little containers and that last me a week or so I will say this there are basically two different kinds of pre-made slack out there right now from Zinser ones waxed and ones d waxed the wax virgins you can get in clear or what they call amber which is normally the orange flakes and clear I don't know what kind of flakes they do but this seal coat is actually 100% d waxed clear shellac and this one right here is waxed shellac and they just call it shellac the reason why they have these different weird name changes is pure marketing because they want people to use a lot of this stuff because if you are refinishing a surface and you have like one paw laid you want paint over it you can scuff it up a little coat of shellac on it a seal coat and it will seal in a lot of stains a lot of odors all that kind of stuff and then you can put your nuke finish on top of that in fact a lot of paints that are like primers that have sealing agents in it or that sealing agent it's basically just shellac but if you have waxed shellac there's some finishes that don't sit on it as well you might get a little orange peel on there or something like that if you don't do it just right so basically I only ever buy this seal coat now the other difference between these two is the bullseye shellac is a three pound cut meaning they put three pounds of slag per gallon of alcohol and the seal coat is a two pound cut that's not a concern to me look at this I filled this bottle up probably two years ago and I just don't use the heavy stuff very much so this has gone bad definitely but you can see the amount of solids in there and then the rest of its flak and just shake it up and that's how you use it whereas the two pound cut it I haven't shaken this one up it never really kind of settles out it's a lot thinner it's a lot water watery and what I typically do is I would take this and put half of it in the ball the rest of it fill up and with alcohol and I will get a one-pound cut and that's what I use for most of my work and then I'll put a little bit two pound cut on the last time and that's the thing that's the less poundage cut you you have the more you have to apply it to get a nice nice finish but the thing is because it's thinner it soaks into the wood and a lot of times I'm just using this as kind of a sealer or if I don't want as much blotching meaning you know ingrained sometimes soaks up more oil than long grain and that's what gives you that nice curly looking stuff like that but if I don't want that a little bit of Schleck will fill some of those pores up and it won't absorb as much oil so I will get a little more even color and that's how kind of how I you select though there are situations where I just want a little bit more of a surface finish than the oil which just penetrates to it at that case I might put a two pound cut at the last time just put in a little bit heavier on top but the thing I don't like about these and lacquers and stuff like that is if that gets really really heavy it it kind of feels plasticky it doesn't feel natural to me which is why I don't really use film finishes that often so if you're using shellac try to mix it up if you're mixing up flakes and alcohol yourself maybe a day or so before you're gonna need it and then only mix up a little bit more than you're going to need on that project and toss the rest if you're buying cans try to get the newest can you possibly can so it's the freshest stuff that's another problem because inter realized that people were actually looking at the dates and buying the newer stuff on the shelf and the older stuff was set and then it wouldn't sell so they started doing these codes lot s 722 or 42 that's supposedly the day but they don't release what those codes mean so you know never really know another reason why you might want to buy the smaller amounts in case you apply it you sand it you realize it's not fully curing that batch is probably an old one and somewhat of a crapshoot an advantage of mixing your owns this is not going to be a crapshoot but I just don't like dealing with those flakes so I buy the premix myself now applying it some people put it on with a heavy brush and that's where you get that heavy look to it and I don't like that I like a natural look so let me show you one way of applying shellac just things like small boxes or wooden bowls hey you're using a wooden bowl you have a really funky one that's gonna put a lot of oil really put a few coaches Schleck on it you'll fill that up and it's not gonna use as much oil and you'll still be just as well finished I mean save yourself some money on the oil you shellac anyways I'll show you technique for applying now out of pure laziness I have been known to apply Schleck with just a paper towel and that never works out well because no matter how smooth your surface is there's always something that's gonna grab a little bit of the lint of your paper towel or something like that and show up especially on corners and everything and then you have to kind of pick it off or sand it off and then reapply your finish and it's just the fact that paper towels break apart and alcohol really kind of speeds that decomposition it's not the greatest thing in the world you do the best thing to do is just find an old t-shirt grab a couple cotton balls and really squish them down hard drop them in your t-shirt twist it and you can use a rubber band or a hair tie from when you're kids or something like that and just kind of make a little wadding thing and the cotton will kind of hold a little bit of extra now that if you've made one of these you can actually use this for a long period of time even after it dries out because a little bit of alcohol will reactivate that shellac now if I'm doing a small box or something like that this is what I'm going to do I'll shake up the shellac this is a two pound cut I have a little bit left of the one pound cut so I'll just start there to show you what the difference is so I'm gonna come over and I just soak my rag and then you can come over and since it's holding that stuff you just kind of DAB it across and when it's really thin like this it just soaks into the wood a little bit dries and that's why they call that first coat a seal coat because it just kind of seals it off so the next layer finished won't go down as deep and you can put it on a cross now can y'all see it drying as it goes the moment that is dry is cure and it's ready to rock and roll and I don't typically wait a minute or two after the fact but it's a little bit tacky that's because this is old stuff there we go that was about 30 seconds it's not tacky anymore let me grab a piece of sandpaper and show you what happens when you sand it so it's been about a minute now I've got 320 grit and it's going to destroy this because this was old shellac but this is smooth to the touch I root you don't really have to sand it unless you're just applying another finish to it and you need it to grip down but if I sand a section of it maybe this stuff is okay I thought it was a little bit old that's up right there you see a little bit of it kind of the little blocks you get on there it happens sometimes now this is a two pound cut and can you see the gloss different it's kind of a matte it's basically just the nicely finished wood right there with a two pound cut once again and just looking at it drawing you can see it's quite a bit heavier now I'll just put it on half of it now I'll do a whole box like this and by the time I get to the other side of the box the first size is ready for me I put a second coat on that's now dry so I can put a second coat on wait for it it just flashes off down live demonstrations when I'm turning in stuff like that sometimes I'll light it on fire to let the alcohol burn off a little bit quicker and here's a third coat I'm just gonna put the third coat on this end over there let that dry now if I turn it to the side can you see the gloss difference this is a one-pound cut it doesn't have much of a film finish I really like this on this right here I'll put a little oil on it and there little wax on it and the wax will give it the machine highlight this right here once you start applying a lot more of it some people like that some kind of semi gloss finish and you can sand that back to matte and that will give you a little bit of protection not much but a little bit but can you see this several quotes it's quite a bit thicker and I don't know if you can tell that from a camera but yeah it builds up to a finish now if you keep doing this rubbing it in it is a form of what they call French polishing and eventually you can get a really nice shine it just takes a little bit of time where does it just keep layering on another layer of shellac each time so if you need kind of a third area of finishing to do consider Schleck it's cheap and inexpensive you can repair fairly easily it's not as durable as you know a hard acrylic or a poly finish but if you scratch it you can repair it just a little bit alcohol rubbing it around and he'll be as good as knit if you're getting started I would stay away from this stuff for no other reason than it's really really heavy you saw me only use a two pound a two pound cut this is a three pound cut plus it's got wax on it so if you do mix it with other finishes such as Polly's and stuff like that you might get have a little bit of an issue if all you're ever using is the D wax stuff you never really have to worry about it and these two kinds will stick to each other no big deal you can move one on top of the other or the other on top of that no actual act it's not that big a deal but it's only a certain finishes when you apply it on top of slag or you might have some issues so if you just stick with D wax should be all okay and I think these cans right here are 12 to 15 dollars a pamper what store you go to since we're talking about finishing today for the bonus I need to tell you what what should be the Bible of finishing you have a check the head this is what book you definitely want to get but before we do that one if you've liked this video please do me a favor like favorite subscribe do all those social medias if you really appreciate what we're doing you want to support this a little bit more you can visit worth effort com where I have an online store where I sell my own woodworking I have some / as a t-shirt ads sticker packs that kind of stuff and there's information on other ways you can patronize us now Bob Flexner he is kind of the Guru right now for a finishing it's not because you know he's just the go-to guy it's because he's taking a very systematic approach to figuring out what works and doesn't in his normal business and just passing that information on to us and he has one of the many books that he's written on it is Bob flex nurse Flexner on finishing that's when you go put a picture of it over here somewhere I don't have the book here I don't I'm I loaned it to my dad I can't always find it but it's my recent resource for finishing questions and it's one of the reasons why I stick with basic oil milk paint and wax and occasionally touch the shellac those are my go-to finishes a lot of that reasoning comes down to what he said in the book so Bob flex nur's Flexner on finishing check it out it's well worth it in sometimes you can find them in the used book stores it's been around for quite a while and no ways really made anything better it's just that good

Channel: wortheffort

Views: 100,103

Rating: 4.9238729 out of 5

Keywords: wortheffort, woodworking, wood working, finish, finishing, shellac, lacquer, oil, wax, tool, hand, power, diy, paint, milkpaint, milk paint, french polish, french polishing, polishing, tip, trick, DIY

Id: 83kTIyJPE-k

Length: 18min 13sec (1093 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 09 2018