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David Binkowski
 
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Default "Dulling" a shellac finish

Try the steel wool on a test piece of wood, and you'll see it dulls
up quite easily (and almost too quickly). Just by coincidence I
did that today. Whenever I mix up a batch of Shellac or any
other finish I find myself playing with all kinds of scrap wood
thats laying around "just to see" what the finish will look like on
various woods... Today I picked one up and it was way shiny,
so I buffed it with a bit of steel wool and the shine wore off fast.

Shellac is completely repairable too so if you don't like the way
its going you can just redo it.

--
The software said it ran under Windows 98/NT/2000, or better.
So I installed it on Linux...
"Tim Schubach" wrote in message
...
I just finished refinshing an old table for a co-worker of mine. With

some
help from the guys at the local WoodCraft store, we were able to determine
that the exitisting finish was a shellac. The table, they guessed, was
about 100 years old, and was very dirty. Some of the finish had already
been worn away down to almost bare wood. After a lot of elbow grease and
some alcohol, I had as much of the exisitng finish off as I could get.

And
in the process, I found that there were inlays in the table that before

were
buried under years of build-up.

I put about 4 coats of shellac back on the table, satisfied that I'd done
the best job I could ( my first time with shellac ), and the result was a
very nice looking mahogany table, with inlays in the top, both leaves, the
legs, and the feet. Unfortunately, my friend did not realize that shellac
is supposed to be a pretty high-gloss finish. While she and her husband
love the "new" table, they both would like a finish that's a little more
"dull".

My first choice would be to "dull up" the shiney finish somehow, and make

it
a lot less glossy. Will some steel wool do that for me, or is there no

way
to take the edge off of a finish like that?

The second option, which I don't like to talk about, is to take off the

new
finish, and put something else in instead. I'm assuming that has the
potential of leading to a lot of trouble since, I don't get 100% of the
shellac off, an incompatible finish will bubble, or react in an

undesireable
way.

So, I'm looking for options and suggestions.

TIA,
tms