Cherry, garnet shellac, topcoat,...

[mark mcfarlane]

I'm building out a wall in my living room. Cabinets are 3/4" cherry plywood with solid face frames. The 22' long 'horizontal thing' running from left to right at 8' above the floor is solid cherry on the front, 1/4" cherry underneath, 3/4" painted birch on top.

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I want to pre-darken the cherry a bit. I'm thinking and tested some garnet shellac and topcoat, ideally with ARM-R_Seal since have a gallon and a half in the shop and it is my go to top coat.

Blotching cherry is a concern... I have no experience with Cherry.

I'm not too worried about blotching on the 3/4" plywood inside the cabinets because they will be full of stuff and in shadows, its the 1/4" cherry plywood that is going to show completely, basically two 2'*8' pieces on the underside of the horizontal feature.

I loaned my HVLP sprayer out, someone gunked the gun. I have parts to rebuild it but would like to avoid spraying if possible. I haven't sprayed much other than some acrylic paint and this project is time sensitive.

I'm thinking that some blotching on the face frames wont be too big a deal. The drawers on the left maybe a bigger deal, and the 1/4" cherry a big challenge, so... how to finish.

My current thought is, hand wiping everything:

1) a light coat of seal coat, right out of the can, to fill the most porous parts of the wood.
2) 1-3 coats of 1lb cut Garnett shellac.
3) 3-4 some coats of arm-r-seal as needed: probably 1 brushed on thick, one hand wiped thick, and one final light coat generally works for me for vertical and light wear surfaces.

Any idea if this is going to work? I've never used cherry much, and I have a tight timeline. I need to get my work done between other crews, e.g. I can't put up the split faced travertine until the cabinets are finished and the back wall is painted. Split faced rock is beautiful, but you can't finish or paint later because the wood is up against a jagged edge of rock.

[mark mcfarlane]

One thing to add, in my testing the first shellac coat seemed to raise the grain a bit, so maybe I need to spritz with water and sand first. I didn't sand my test well, it was straight off the drum sander at 150 grit. I was in a hurry to see what the Garnett Shellac did.

[mark mcfarlane]

Another thought I had was to build the faces and cut the 1/4" plywood and season it in the sun for a couple of days. I have done this before with poplar drawer fronts in 95 degrees weather, but it required my to flip the wood every 30 minutes to reduce cupping.

[Jim Becker]

You don't really want to be spraying an oil based finish, my friend...messy, sticky, not fun. Did I happen to mention messy and sticky?

Do test pieces. Not an option to skip that step!!! The garnet shellac should do the job. I do recommend you use wax free for best results.

[mark mcfarlane]

You don't really want to be spraying an oil based finish, my friend...messy, sticky, not fun. Did I happen to mention messy and sticky?

Do test pieces. Not an option to skip that step!!! The garnet shellac should do the job. I do recommend you use wax free for best results.

Thanks Jim. Garnett shellac over the seal coat, or do you think I can wipe the Garnett shellac directly onto the plywood? I can do more test pieces, but not a 2'x8' test, which is the size of the plywood pieces I am most worried about.

[Paul F Franklin]

On my office built-ins I started with garnet shellac on the bare wood, and top coated with GF High performance. Mix of 1/4 and 3/4 plywood and solid wood.

Cherry is going to blotch some, but IMO it was not objectionable. Some folks say sanding to a higher grit (like 400) helps reduce it, but I stop at 220. There was some grain raising; I just sanded with 220 grit after the first coat of shellac. Use fresh, sharp sandpaper for this. I sprayed both the shellac and the HP. But on my test panels and prototype cabinet I applied by hand. You will need practice getting even color with the garnet shellac whether you pad it on or spray; it's easy to get streaks. Multiple thin coats helps even things out. Some folks can brush on shellac and get good results; I am not one of those people, especially on large pieces where maintaining a wet edge is really hard.

[Jim Becker]

Thanks Jim. Garnett shellac over the seal coat, or do you think I can wipe the Garnett shellac directly onto the plywood? I can do more test pieces, but not a 2'x8' test, which is the size of the plywood pieces I am most worried about.

Using the Zinsser SealCoat and then the Garnet shellac is redundant. Remember, applying shellac on top of shellac results in just a thicker layer of shellac...just one layer because it all melts together. Shellac is an evaporative finish and that's why it behaves like that.

[John TenEyck]

It's not exactly redundant to apply SealCoat first then the garnet shellac. Yes they will melt together, but the SealCoat will fill up the thirsty pores and help reduce blotching as long as you don't keep going back over the same area. All that said, Mark, if you can spray the shellac you can pretty much eliminate blotching. It's my go to way of dealing with cherry when I need to add color. I use Transtint in water or DNA, and sometimes Transtint in Sealcoat which is just like garnet shellac. In all cases, as long as you don't spray any more than the wood can absorb it won't blotch. I'm not saying the color will be perfectly uniform, as different grain orientation will refract the light differently, but it won't have that garish blotching that looks like an amateur finished it.

Sanding to 320 or 400 grit will help reduce blotching and grain raising, too.

Good luck. That looks like a great project.

John

[mark mcfarlane]

Thanks Jim, Paul, and John for taking the time to answer.

I'm still resisting spraying shellac since my gun needs ti be rebuilt and I don't have a lot of experience with it.

So here is my updated plan

hand wiping everything:

0) Sand everything to 320 (this is a big change for me, I typically only sand white oak (my primary wood) to 150 and put on the arm-r-seal. It works beautifully.
1) a light coat of seal coat, right out of the can, to fill the most porous parts of the wood.
2) 1-3 coats of 1lb cut Garnett shellac.
3) 3-4 some coats of arm-r-seal as needed: probably 1 brushed on thick, one hand wiped thick, and one final light coat generally works for me for vertical and light wear surfaces.

I might do some tests adding transtint to the arm-r-seal.

[Jim Becker]

Mark, pick up an inexpensive gun to spray shellac with exclusively. It's an easy material to spray. I kept my old Wagner HPLV conversion gun specifically for shellac when I bought the upgraded gun with the PPS system a couple years ago. A decent gun from Harbor Freight is perfectly fine for spraying shellac as the viscosity is generally low and it's pretty easy to get a nice pattern.

[Robert Engel]

I don't see the need for SealCoat, just go straight to the garnet shellac. Sand with 500 grit b/t coats.

I've tinted it with Behlen solar lux dyes (alcohol based) to darken it.

Yes, shellac is easy to spray and clean up. Not too sure about doing that inside, tho. ArmRSeal works well over shellac. I could have rubbed this out some more.

IMG_1342.jpg

[mark mcfarlane]

My local Harbor Freight has this gun for $25. Suitable for spraying shellac? https://www.harborfreight.com/air-to...tor-62381.html For $25 I might not even want to clean it .

Does one just spray DNA through the gun to clean out shellac?

If I'm going to spray, I'm thinking maybe a 2lb cut instead of wiping a 1 lb cut. All I'm trying to do with the garnet shellac is fake/hurry up the natural UV aging process a little, I'm not targeting a specific color.

Hopefully my 8oz of shellac flakes will be enough. That stuff was expensive, almost $40 for half a pound at Woodcraft.

The weather has been lovely lately, I could probably spray outside and then carry the pieces into the shop to finish drying.

So here is my proposed schedule:

1) Sand up to 320
2) Spray 2lb cut of Garnett shellac
3) Sand 320
4) Repeat: Satin Arm-R-Seal - sand 320, until desired film is achieved

My first coat of Arm-R-Seal will probably be semi-gloss with subsequent coats of satin (based on what I have in the shop).

[Jim Becker]

Shellac is really easy to spray and yes, part of the cleaning process is running some DNA through it.

One other nice things here with shellac: You can take that SealCoat, which you know is wax free, and tint it with dye that's alcohol soluble, spray it to tone and then move on to your top coats. One thing that's important, however, is that your shellac, no matter what product or how you apply it, should be as thin as you can practically make it. Do not try to build up shellac like you would most other products. Bad things can happen, such as crazing/cracking, etc.

[Paul F Franklin]

On my office built-ins I used 1.5 lb cut garnet. I had to practice a lot to minimize streaking. Using a 1 lb cut and applying thin coats would make it easier, I think, to avoid streaks. Shellac dries so quickly you can apply multiple coats in a day, and there is less chance of ending up too dark.

[John TenEyck]

I'll second what Jim said. SealCoat + Transtint dye offers you the option to make any color you want at far lower cost than buying shellac flakes + alcohol.

The purple HF gun sprays SealCoat beautifully. 20 psi inlet pressure, the fan wide open, and about 1-1/4 turns on the needle knob.

John