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View Full Version : Dining room table, shellac mistakes, and breadboard ends...



Brian Erickson
01-22-2008, 4:30 PM
I am building a Stickley-style dining room table for some friends in cherry. I built a similar one for myself a few years ago in qs white oak.

Because all the wood I had was 4/4, the outer "stiles" of the top and the breadboard ends are laminated pieces to get to the 1.5" desired thickness.

I have an unnatural desire to try new things when I am working on these big projects,:rolleyes:, so I thought this might be a good time to try the Jeff Jewitt blo/shellac/top coat approach to cherry. I have never previously used shellac... (the ominous music swells somewhere in the background).

So, of course, I brushed on the shellac and left brush marks. Too thick of a cut. I scrubbed it off with alcohol, or at least most of it, which left some lighter "spots" where the shellac came off completely. I assumed these would darken with another coat of shellac, but now that I've thinned the garnet shellac, it's not coloring it much at all.

So here are my questions:
1) How do I address the shellac color issue? Should I worry about having too many coats of shellac between the blo and the (probably poly) top coat?
2) Should I be concerned about thinned shellac working its way down into the breadboard ends and effectively "gluing them" to the rest of the top? Is there a remedy for this (other than waxing the stub tenon before glue-up, which I conveniently forgot to do)?

Sorry for the long post, thanks in advance for any help. I do love the shellac, now that I know how to do it, but I'm not sure how to make up for past mistakes...

Brian

Steve Schoene
01-22-2008, 5:09 PM
The color issue. The shellac will slowly even out the color as you build more coats. If you feel you have too thick a coating, you can sand it thinner after you have build the shellac. The color will largely tell you where the thick and thin spots are to guide your sanding. Brush strokes might have been easier to sand off than to wash off.

I don't know of any way short of taking off the breadboard to be absolutely sure you haven't "glued" the parts together. I haven't used this construction with a shellac finish so don't really have a good idea of the risk.

If you plan to use a polyurethane varnish top coat the shellac must be dewaxed or you will have adhesion problems. That's no loss, since you will get a nicer look if you use a traditional resin varnish instead of varnish made with polyurethane among the resins.