Drawers still have an odor

[Roy Fleming]

I screwed up a while back & put poly on some drawers before i realized the off gassing odor will never go away. Since then I have put on 2 coats of seal coat and they still have the odor when left closed for a period of time. Any ideas on what I can do??.

[Howard Acheson]

What about the inside of the carcase. Did you coat that with poly or some other oilbased finish?

Coating with dewaxed shellac generally takes care of the problem but not always. Oil based finish gets into nooks and crannies and the shellac may not form a perfect seal. Also, with drawers, the bottoms are sometimes loose and oil finish may have gotten in. Shellac may seal the seams but as drawer is used, the seal is broken.

You may not be able to fully stop the off-gasing. As off-gassing tapers off with time, if six months has gone by, you could try another coat of shellac.