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Posted by Glenn on July 19, 2006, 11:03 am
RE: staining. An old trick used for years to "tame down" stain is
to put a coat of shellac thinned about 80% or more just to slow
the stain up and make it even. Grain still comes out showing but
more evenly, no black spots. It soaks into those soft spots more
than the harder spots and tends to seal those spots more than the
rest. Hence, everything stains evenly.
>>> We finished our pine doors with two coats of amber
>>> shellac, first coat straight, sanded lightly, second
>>> coat thinned 50% with alcohol. They turned out great.
>> I thought the usual practice was to thin the first coat
>> to improve penetration into the bare wood. What is the
>> motivation behind your recipe?
>
> To be honest, trial and error... :) I had never worked
> with shellac before, so I had no idea what the "usual"
> practice was.
>
> I was originally going to use a stain and polyurethane.
> But I feared all the little crevices in the raised panel
> doors would tend to trap stain, which would show up if
> the wood shrunk. The stain also turned out the wrong
> color on the pine, even with preconditioner.
>
> After trying multiple stains on scraps I cut from the
> door bottoms, someone on the woodworking newsgroup
> suggested amber shellac. I applied the first coat
> straight from the can. The color was nice, it was thin
> enough to get into all the little crevices, and it didn't
> hide the woodgrain like stain sometimes does.
>
> Unfortunately, the shellac did leave a very glossy
> finish. I tried several ideas folks mentioned for rubbing
> down the shellac, but with 8 doors to finish that would
> have been a tremendous amount of work.
>
> Through experimentation, I found that a light sanding of
> the first coat with a flexible sanding block, followed by
> a thinned down second coat, resulted in a nice satin
> finish. I tried a straight second coat on scraps, but the
> finish was too glossy and the color turned too orange.
> Thinning down the second coat worked perfectly.
>
> It may not be the "proper" way of applying shellac, but
> we are very happy with the results.
>
> Anthony
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