(upbeat jazz music)
- Alright so now
when mixing your own shellac,
what do you mix it with?
It doesn't go into water,
it doesn't go into mineral spirits.
This is when we use our denatured alcohol.
The alcohol will dissolve the shellac,
put it into solution
and make it so that
it's either wipeable, brushable,
or something that you can spray.
Now if you're going to do this a lot,
I highly recommend
either stealing from the house
or just go to Walmart
and pick up a really cheap coffee grinder
or spice grinder.
And I keep this one in here
expressly for this purpose.
This is the only thing I ever use it for
and you can see the shellac dust
that's left in there from pulverizing it.
You see when this stuff
dissolves in alcohol,
the more surface area
that's in contact
with the alcohol,
the faster it dissolves.
If you just put these flakes in there,
it's gonna take a pretty significant
amount of time.
Probably I would say
maybe eight to ten hours depending
for that to go completely in the solution.
And you do have to come back to it
and shake it.
So get yourself
a collection of jars.
We eat a lot of pasta
in this household
so we have plenty of spaghetti jars.
A quick and dirty two pound cut.
For me,
I don't like measuring.
I don't like weighing the stuff.
Weighing it is the most accurate.
I like you sort of volumetric measurements
because it's just easier for me to do.
I take a jar
and I don't want to make a whole lot,
because I'm only doing a test board today.
And I mark my fill line.
And of course
this is an irregular shaped bottle,
so that kind of
screws me up a little bit.
That's my final fill line.
I don't want any more shellac
than that
when it's all said and done.
Then, I mark a line
that's gonna be about halfway down.
Now I'm actually going to go
a little lower than half
because my bottle
bows out at the bottom.
And obviously you can see
how ballparked all of this is.
If you just have flakes,
you basically put your flakes up
to that halfway line.
But I'm gonna pulverize mine,
which means I'm actually gonna be able
to fit more shellac material
into a smaller amount of space
which will throw that figure off
a little bit.
So what I'm gonna do
is fill up my jar
to the halfway line.
Once I'm at the halfway line
now I know I have about
as much as I need.
So now I'm gonna pulverize it.
(grinding)
You don't have to go nuts on it.
We're looking for a course grind,
not necessarily an espresso grind.
Okay so now we add
denatured alcohol
up to that fill line.
Now I know this stuff isn't good to breathe,
but I know I can't be the only person in the world
who loves the smell
(pouring)
of denatured alcohol.
I just have enough,
look at that.
So it's probably not a bad time
to take a lunch break.
And bring this with you,
and just every five or ten minutes or so
pick it up, give it a good shake.
And then once you see
that it's a completely clear;
well, not clear
but completely consistent solution.
There's really nothing in suspension
floating around,
that's when it's ready to go.
And, you've got an approximate two pound cut
and you didn't have to weigh anything.
So after about three or four hours
the shellac looks like
it's pretty well dissolved.
We can go ahead and pour it
into a secondary container.
Shellac, because of the alcohol in it,
dries really fast.
And if you have a problem applying it,
there's nothing wrong with
diluting it more.
So just add more
of the alcohol
to the mixture
and get it to the consistency
that you have enough time
to spread a nice, thin layer.
Now what happens is,
the way you know you have a problem,
is as you start spreading it,
you'll feel it catch
which means it's already starting to solidify.
It'll gum up on you,
it'll get really messy
so if that happens
you may be better off just leaving it alone,
letting it dry and sanding it back,
or just grabbing some denatured alcohol
and wipe it off.
You can clean it all off that way.
But the cure for it bascially
is to get some more alcohol
and dilute it down a little bit
to give you a little bit more working time.
So two pound is,
for this type of thing,
is about right.
Might be a little bit strong.
And if you're not used to shellac
you might want to bring it down
to a one pound cut roughly.
For this little sample piece
we shouldn't have much of a problem.
That beautiful
orange amber kind of tone
that's being imparted into the wood,
that's exactly what we want.
Perfect.
(happy music)