• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

Varnish over shellac?

S

Stuart

Sapling
Joined
May 21, 2021
Messages
393
Reaction score
113
I know there are many new fangled finishes around that claim to be the dog danglies (and they might indeed be!).

I’m a lover of shellac and have been for years. I like the quick application (several coats in a day) and that I can to an extent grain fill with it (build up, cut back). It isn’t however very robust and in my experience repeated handling does cause problems.

So, I need a more robust finish but was wondering if varnishing over shellac will provide that? I’ve got a couple of test panels on the go but these are only going to be short term on my bench and I’m wanting any views on longer term robustness if anyone has done this before.

Thoughts and views appreciated.
 
I have used satin varnish over sanding sealer to good effect, no complaints yet on jewellery boxes etc that have been handled regularly. 2 coats of sanding sealer light denib between, then a quick drying varnish over the top. Sanding sealer dries incredibly quickly. Not tried shellac specifically so cannot comment on that.
 
I don't see why not; best thing to do is to try it out on a scrap test piece and see what the results are. I'm currently rediscovering Lemon Oil for the inside of drawers on the current project and have within the last hour sloshed a first coat on a bit of scrap mahogany - Rob
 
For my instruments, I use cellulose sanding sealer on the spruce or cedar soundboards (tops), epoxy resin grain fill on the sides, backs and necks, and then 12 coats of nitrocellulose over everything (rubbed back every coat and a day rest between each three). Followed by a couple of weeks curing and then rubbing back up through the grades of w&d to 1200 then micro mesh from 1500 to 12000.

Guitars and ukuleles get some pretty rough handling.
 
A friend / acquaintance of mine refinishes grand pianos and also does finish repairs on poly etc. He's Polish. Which is appropriate for a refinisher. Anyway, he has previously told me that an acrylic or poly finish applied over shellac or french, will result in crazing beneath the top coat over time. This is apparently especially so with the new superfast curing topcoats that go off in seconds using a UV lamp curing device.

Obviously the lid or sides of a grand piano is a large area and the slightest flaw stands out like a pimple on a pretty girl's chin.
 
Woodbloke said:
I don't see why not; best thing to do is to try it out on a scrap test piece and see what the results are. I'm currently rediscovering Lemon Oil for the inside of drawers on the current project and have within the last hour sloshed a first coat on a bit of scrap mahogany - Rob
Click to expand...
My point Rob (probably not well made) is that I’m doing this but I wonder what the longer term ‘robustness’ is like. Interestingly, one of my samples (3 costs of shellac and one of the magic mix) isn’t showing any signs of drying even after 4 hours.
 
StevieB said:
I have used satin varnish over sanding sealer to good effect, no complaints yet on jewellery boxes etc that have been handled regularly. 2 coats of sanding sealer light denib between, then a quick drying varnish over the top. Sanding sealer dries incredibly quickly. Not tried shellac specifically so cannot comment on that.
Click to expand...
What type of sanding sealer Stevie? There are a few around (unless of course you mean shellac?!)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top