Reply To: Shellac finish on padauk & movingui
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Would spraying solve the problem? A chess board isn’t very large, so it isn’t crazy to buy canned, aerosol spray shellac. I must say, I’ve not been happy with the blurpy spray quality from Zinnser’s spray shellac, but that may not matter here because the approach would be to spray the lightest possible first coats. You do *not* want a wet coat because you want zero chance of a run and don’t want to form a wet surface in which dyes/dust can migrate. You just want the barest, dry coat to lock things down. It will look dusty and incomplete. Let it dry, then put down another dry coat. Things will look awful at this point. Look at glazing light and watch for when you the few dry coats have covered everything and given you a complete barrier over the wood, even if bumpy from the dry spray and blurpy nozzle. There will probably be raised grain. Ignore it. Once you get to this point, you can spray a wetter coat. Again, it won’t look great, but you’ll have enough finish on after that first sort-of-wet coat that you can make a single wipe with 600 grit abrasive (foam backed like rhynosoft is my favorite) to knock off most of the fuzz. You’re not sanding…you’re wiping. It’s like painting with the abrasive, doing the airplane landing/takeoff thing. Take one pass down a strip, move over the width of your pass, and repeat. You may have fuzz left after, which is fine. Okay, at this point you’ve locked down the surface of the work under a barrier coat without dragging a brush. My hope is that you can then switch to a brush to build your real finish coats. Take care because shellac dissolves earlier coats and you don’t want to liberate those bottom layers. A light scuff between coats will kill the rest of the fuzz.
So, that’s a guess at what I’d try. Glue up some scrap and see if it works. Scraping / planing rather than sanding may be important.
This same general idea might also work with spray lacquer, like Deft. I don’t see why lacquer couldn’t be sprayed as the dry barrier coats and then you switch to shellac on top. I’m a little nervous that the lacquer thinner in the spray may cause bleeding, but you’ll know that by testing on scrap. The good thing, though, is that shellac (alcohol) will not dissolve lacquer. So, if you get the lacquer barrier coat on successfully, you can build shellac on top without as much fear of melting through.
If you spray lacquer (from a can, or from anything), wear a half or full-face cartridge respirator (not dust mask) listed as suitable and educate yourself about fire/explosion risk. This is really true for the spray shellac, too, but the MEK in the lacquer needs to be taken very seriously in my opinion even spraying outdoors.