Having achieved some measure of success recently in matching color using shellac with TransTint dyes, I'd like to work on a reliable application method to use it in the future. I'm going to practice on a shelf I'm adding to an entertainment center (yes, quite the dinosaur bit of furniture these days) which is poplar-edged maple plywood. The entertainment center is alder so this is non-ideal, but it wasn't worth spending much money on as this will be a short-lived addition. The poplar front edge will be all that anyone sees on a regular basis but this is a good opportunity to work on process.
Brushing on the tinted shellac results in a hot mess. How fast you move the brush, overlaps, gaps... lots of sanding and touch-up work needs to be done to somewhat normalize the color and the results aren't sufficiently uniform. Suggestions have been made to spray, and I can go that route but I think this may not be a panacea for color uniformity. I have both a HVLP conversion gun and an inexpensive Earlex HVLP that I need to get accustomed to using on my projects so happy enough to give it a try.
I searched the forum and found a lot of recommendations for various situations. Spraying as the first coat seems to be the most common suggestion, but at least one involved flooding the wood surface with the tinted shellac; I'm having trouble visualizing how that would work. But I'd certainly like to have a reliable manual application method in my finishing repertoire.
Thanks,
- Leo