"todd" wrote in
:

I'm testing a few different finishes for a new cherry project I'm
working on and one involves shellac. This is my first adventure in
shellac and I'm not sure what's going on in the mixing. I'm using
blonde dewaxed shellac flakes from Hock, which I just mixed with 8 oz
of the denatured alcohol they provide to make a 2lb. cut. I've read
that it's best to crush the shellac flakes to speed the process, so I
had an old coffee grinder in the garage that was unused and used that.
I thought I was on the cutting edge of shellac flake grinding until I
was doing a ng archive search today on this problem and came upon a
post from Paddy describing the same thing. In any case, it's been
mixed for about 12 hours and right now I have a lightly colored
alcohol solution with about 3/8" of goo in the bottom. I've read the
suggestions to immerse in hot water, which I haven't tried yet. Am I
being too impatient? I expected the whole thing to dissolve by now,
even without the addition of heat.

todd


I have been using shellac myself for the last 10 projects, great stuff.
I grind the flakes to dust in my coffee grinder, then add to alcohol,
shake it up good, and it dissolves in an hour or less sitting in the
sun. So the only thing I can think of is you need to warm it up some,
and maybe grind it a bit finer next time, and shake it more often. I
shake the solution every 10 minutes or so, while it is dissolving. I
have never had to wait more than an hour before the shellac was
completely dissolved.

Kruppt