All,

I'm a newbie at spray finishing, so any hints/suggestions appreciated.

As part of my home office remodel, I'm building cherry built-ins. The cabinet doors will be solid cherry frames with inset 1/4" cherry plywood (floating) panels in shaker style.

My normal finishing schedule for cherry is to do a sealer coat or two of garnet shellac to give some warmth and pop the grain a bit. After sanding with 220 or 320, I topcoat with general finishes high performance water born poly.

When I do this by hand, I completely finish the panel by itself, shellac, sanding, poly. I apply the shellac to the frame pieces before glue-up, masking the glue areas. Then I assemble the door. If there's any minor flushing of the joints needed, I do that and touch up the shellac. Then I brush on the poly to the frame only, since the panel is complete.

My question is how to modify this schedule for spray finishing? My thought is to the pre-finish the panel with shellac only, sand and then assemble the door. Hit the whole door with shellac, sand, and then do the whole door with the poly. The thought on doing the panel first is it will avoid any bare wood showing as the frame shrinks and swells.

Since I'm new to spraying, I'd like to know if this makes sense or if I should do something different? Most online videos I've seen are for painting doors, and they just do the assembled door, panel and all.