Casey wrote:Hi, Garnet shellac from shellacshack is my go-to finish also. You can darken it further by adding transtint dyes or powdered wood dye (alcohol-type)....
This x100!
Also, if anyone wants to try cleaning their original shellac finishes, I've found that Gojo cream hand cleaner and #0000 steel wool does wonders. Follow up with a rinse of Murphy oil soap to get rid of the loosened crud.
my method.. strip the paint. sand or scrape or plane make it smooth and flat. use a belt sander planer random orbital, do what works, just get down to an even base material. dont worry about the darkness being removed, just make the wood look nice. sand with the grain. take a kiss cut on the tablesaw to smooth up edges etc. If applicable. I do that on casings basebaords so I dont have to scrape the edges by hand. you loose about 1/6th or so of the dimension. if you thin the board in the process of making it flat you and glue strips along the backside with similar wood and you will never notice it's been added.
if the shape of roundovers are affected by sanding simply recut them with a router to clean up the roundover. since you trimmed or sanded the edges flat the roundover bit will follow the surface with its bearing , or you can use a router table without the guide bearing if you prefer.
fill any nail holes with putty match the color of the putty to the wood with the finish on it. make sure you get the putty color right. experiment and use some different colors of putty blend them use darker puy near the darer areas with practice you can make any small defect invisible. to do that punch small holes in masking tape. put it over the nail hole, fill with putty knife, pull the tape sand flat when dry. if you stil have some paint flecks pick them out, as long as you get them lower than the surface you can use paint or pens or putty to hide them so dont worry about paint if it is down in crevices, just any near the surface.
this picking process can be tedious so that's why I sand the wood, then you aren't fighting with that nonsense. in some cases the contours require more work so be it.
when you are happy with the smoothness of the parts and have any paint removed, then :
2 coats of clear (natural) dainish oil. - no stain or pigment . let it fill cracks and rough indents and such with clear first. ( because otherwise pigments collect in imperfections)
after two coats, then add just a teeny bit of stain to the mix if you want it darker then do multiple coats until you are happy with the color. You can do 10 coats if that's what it takes to get there but go slowly in stages, let it soak in and pop the grain. dont go crazy with the stain , just use it to correct the color and get back to the color you want because you just you made it all a lot lighter by sanding.
apply your finish once you are happy with the look and color, choose any finish you like or just do more danish oil every once in a while if you dont want a hard shell over the wood , it will look best if it has nothing over the wood.
by sanding and removing the existing finish and any bumps and roughness you have the paint flecks removed without going nuts picking at flecks.
with this process I dont worry about "patina" I use very, very little stain because I dont like hiding the nice grain and ribbon under pigments. if you topcoat with shellac or lacquer or poly or whatever you can tint that to be an amber or slightly chocolate like a cup of coffee, dont make it too strong instead do more coats this will improve consistency and eliminate any streaky patterns.
alternatively you can try to save the patina. In my experience this is a time consuming and finicky process.. I would save that for furniture and things that justify that level of work. in my process you don't worry about sanding down into the wood. Instead you correct your color after sanding to replicate the natural darkening of the wood.
one reason I like this way is because I often replicate parts or use other old parts liek baseboards from some other house.. so it helps match the color of wood pieces that come together from different sources. If you have some lighter boards or new wood, simply apply more coats of thinned danish oil with a small amount of pigment added. You can use cherry if you want it more red or chocolate if you want it more brown , etc. but go easy small stages watch it darken slowly after each application until you get where you want. consider how dark the rest of your woodwork is. you can distress the wood if you want to beat it with chains and things to make it look old. but I don't..
I dont actually use the danish oil from the can , I add turpentine. If I wan to drive the finish in of if it becomes sticky I use more turps. usually about 50/50 is fine. but if you vary that its fine. use linseed oil if you prefer.. always wipe down completely after applying the oil let it soak but then wipe it all off with clean cotton towels.
if you want to put shellac overtop. buy the flakes dissolve in alcohol decant any wax that settles. dampen a pad. wipe on a thin coat, wait let it dry a bit. continue doing that to build the finish, don't use a brush except for maybe the first coat. the wiping action drives the stuff down into pores and works the finsih flat. lack of pores is shiny. so it wont look all bumpy and rough like in the photos. maybe some like that,,, didn't mean to insult anyone butto me it's all bumpy and the stain is hiding the grain. Just my candid opinion. Id wash it off and go again after you get back to the wood save rejuvinating the finish for that fancy table or something.. It isn't impossible but there is lots to learn about repairing finishes and it isn't as easy as you first may assume.
with the shellac.. if you wipe too soon or dwell too long you will find it getting sticky , stop! let it dry because you dont want to muck up the layers you have put down previously. it melts into itself but if you go too much you get a sticky mess. every time you walk by give it a quick thin wipe then leave it, this will build a very smooth coating. You can brush if you absolutely need to but wiping makes it smoother, brushing leaves a mess of brush strokes etc and leaves it too thick or a ugly bumpy shiny mess like in the photo. wiping wont leave it all streaky.
there is technique to padding shellac. you can experiment with the pound cut or concentration also with how wet the pad is you dip the pad to replenish bu tthere is an art to keeping that pad just the right amount of wet with the alcohol and shellac.. you dont want drippy and you dont want it to stick into the surface of the finish.. practice will guide you. the corners are easy to keep wipingthe finish off so be gentle and try to avoid rubbing the finish off corners on each application.
you can brush it on , you can pad it on or you can do french polishing which is an even higher finish probably best for furniture but they are all related.
once finished nail it back. set the nails fill with wax crayon. modern pin nails have thin heads, easy to hide. if necessary pre-drill holes slightly smaller than your nails to prevent cracking the old dry woodwork. I fill all the holes during the putty stage , easy to make more holes. try to drive nails where you see imperfections in the wood to help hide them.
I often stop at the oil stage then put my trim back then apply oil more over time even months or years it's ok.. and I can apply a finish in place if I mask the walls so I dont get the finish all over. whatever works for you.
If you can't remove it, do it in place but don't fall into the situation where you are doing everything in place to avoid cracking it during removal . , remove it slowly pry near nails if they have small heads , dont pull them out pull them through because it damages the face surface less , less to fill. the least amount of surface touched by putty the better, use it very sparingly dont go covering large areas with putty. If you have anything bigger than a credit card slot use wood slivers. you can cut wedges soak the in glue press them in then trim flush instead of using too much filler. If done right you will have a very hard time finding the putty , do that wrong and you can make a ugly mess with putty. if you crack the wood work glue into the crack clamp it or just use masking tape to hold the pieces tight until dry. do something like pull on a board and hear a crack , reach for the glue bottle.. just like that.. its fixed while the chips match up just make sure you have a perfect fit before applying the glue. you can use capillary action , put a little glue then flex the crack it will pull the glue right in or you can use a very thin flat artists spatula to help work the glue in wipe it off the surface dont leave a glue mess it will resist stain if you do.
if you have to putty long thin cracks lay masking tape exactly along the edges of both sides of the crack take a putty knife and press the putty right down and in , pull the tape, sand flat when dry.. if you can make the putty bump up a bit wit the pressure that's good it makes up for shrinkage that way. dont put putty where you dont need putty. if you fill a hole use lots then pull the tape off. this way it will fill the nail hole not just the surface.
ok so that's my methodology. you can ask everyone and use the ideas you like best. I know some try harder to save the patina. I understand the theory but in practice time is a part of the process too. I hate stain so I only use it to darken the wood to make up for sanding the surface off. I use very little stain and suggest using it very sparingly never straight from the can only about 5 percent in the danish oil.. a light tint You aren't painting it brown.
the finish protects the wood it isn't filler. It isn't' for adding color but it is normal for the finish to darken over time so avoid anything that is truly clear, most finishes should look amber or like coffee, you are trying to create a situation where the piece looks original and cared for, not like something that just left the ikea showroom.. so there is some art in it, some perception and people have preferences of material and methods. If you build up darkened ugly finishes on top of each other you are then masking the beauty of the wood under the finish.. the finish is a protection that you put on AFTER you get to the point where you are satisfied the look, the color and the smoothness and the darkness.
the reason I like danish oil and turps it dries just a little faster than just linseed oil and turps.. I like to see how the wood looks with a finish on it the oil is a finish and it will pop the grain and show the color of the wood with finish on it then you can doctor that before you add a shell over top to protect the wood further. the oil also absorbs into the wood leaving a hard surface within the wood but near the surface.. If I dont like the look with the oil on it then I fix that before I go to top-coating with a hard shell and encapsulating the wood. want o sand a little more after the oil is applied, go ahead and then just apply more oil and it will be fine.
the less coating over the wood the better it looks so keep the finish thin that way the light gets down through the finish and back to your eye without a heavy filter of muck to hide the wood and let the light pass through. if you color the wood color then you see the the wood not the finish over top of the wood. It all adds together so if you finish has a little tint then it has an effect overall. the nicest finishes dont look like stuff on top of wood, they look like wood. the les thickness the better but that shell may need a certain thickness depending what level of protection you are after to a point of course..
dont use shellac outdoors, these finishes are not really weather proof.
If you screw up in finishing just wash it with lacquer thinners that will take any shellac off and you can go again.
if it's a wet environment like kitchen cabinets or in the bath you may want poly instead of shellac and it can be applied so it doessn't look "plastic" some people glob the stuff on but it is a good product it just has its place.. great on the kids table not on grandmas antique. its more durable and it has some differneces. If yo uneed to sand it and recoat you can and you can wet sand it with paper wet with solvent so it doesn't glom onto your sandpaper. you can make poly loo great but it has some different properties. unlike shellac it wont melt into itself for example.
we dont talk a lot about lacquer here in the forum much but it is also a very good product and can be used in similar ways. it does have similar properties to shellac. it melts into itself , it works well if you spray it. it dries really fast. it's a bit harder than shellac but not so tough as poly . like shellac you can wash it off with lacquer thinners. since shellac and laquer both dissolve in alcohol dont use them if alcohol will be present like the top of a bar. the polite crowd use coasters because of this. alcohol wont dissolve poly.
My pantry project (documented on this site) was all finished with multiple coats of garnet shellac. yu do not need to sand between coats of shellac - at most a de-nib is needed after first coat - as each coat melts into the one below, sanding is a waste of time
Interesting thread. I am going to strip a door of the balance of it's grain painting. A previous owner had stripped the back and a 1/3 of the front, so I will finish the job. The doors in the house are some kind of pine. Everything has a shellac finish, but the door have a reddish tint to them. My thought was to use a mahogany stain then an amber shellac. I plan to experiment before hand on some old scrap wood parts. I learn so much from this group.
I second the recommendation for General Finishes Java stain and garnet shellac. That is what the top professional in my city uses when he restores Arts and Crafts furniture.
many of the radios I collect have a very dark finish. It was usually not a stain that penetrated the actual wood. stripping them and refinishing involves replacing the original finish that was normally quite heavily tinted, usually laquer. If you wash off the finish you go down to the natural wood usually, it's not stained wood. so to me If I remove a finish and see that's how it was done I'd try to put the tint in the finish not on the wood even though of course putting a heavily tinted layer over the wood hides the grain. on older furniture It may have been a different process. Most radios were made is a sort of production environment so lacquers worked well as the labor and dry time was reduced. usually I find if I wash off an old finish with stripper or lacquer thinners the color comes off with the finish it isn't embedded into the wood itself.
if you inspect a piece and plan to refinish it, often you can see some flaked areas where the finish was removed or scratched off. If you see that the wood that shows through isn't stained then you know if the darkness was part of the finish or not.
If you strip and refinish stuff you can pay attention to where the color is, you might find it done differently with older furniture and a lot of that used prime lumber of walnut etc which was naturally dark. the radios use a lot of veneer, they were using that wood carefully by making veneer instead of solid lumber. the dark color was to replicate older pieces in which they had looked upon as being of fine quality. very few were refinished in lighter tones. some of course. On many you can barely see the grain as the toner was so dark. when lighter wood was used they often used a very dark toner and it looks much like brown paint except you can see the wood grain through it somewhat, the tint was not a solid color it was transparent although very dark.
often the flat panels were veneered, but a lot of the time things like molded edging were not walnut but some light wood like maple so they hid the light woods with the dark toner and the result was usually a darkened finish over the veneer but they wanted to see the grain. on the light colored wood edging they used the very dark finish very often. I use Mohawk extra dark walnut lacquer toner for that. for the finish over veneer I blend some lighter toners like American walnut into the lacquer itself to replicate the toner that was used. that can be applied in several coats and the stuff in the spray gun looks about like coffee with no creme.
if its a rare one people know what it should look like so if people dont know and apply a dark stain right into he wood it is usually considered a mistake and that devalues the piece if it's an antique you should try to retain originality as much as possible.
the finish should reflect what you want as an end result. some people dont care about this stuff but if its something valuable I'd pay attention and try to replicate the finish if you are able rather than altering it permanently.
if the tint is not embedded into the wood you have a chance to redo your work if you screw it up part way through. If you use wipe on stains and whatnot that's irreversible if its veneer because you can't sand it enough to remove the embedded pigments.
wiping stains on wood can be tricky because so much depends on even absorption, the porosity has so much to do with absorption and its easy to run into issues were you see the streaks from wiping or else the unevenness from differences in porosity. If you spray on dyes then it is distributed evenly but if that spray process goes all wrong then its hard to fix.
for trim and bits around my house (not antique furniture) I favor wipe on finishes because I'm usually not changing the darkness by much and it is easier to do with other objects around, no spray equipment or booth is necessary. I can wipe on oils and finishes even where its dusty and that way there are no overspray issues, no gun to clean and It is easy to do some, and then stop and continue with other bits and pick up on it later. I htink you can go too far with things to do with the house as these are generally larger areas so your finishing method should also be reflective of the size of the job so that you can repeat it. Its fine to spend a couple of weekends working out the finish on a table you like but you dont wan to go to that level with every bit of your house or you might run out of lifetime before you get done.
some of these processes like spraying stain work better in a manufacturing environment than in your home workshop because in that environment they are probably doing things more consistently with the necessary equipment which of course gives more consistent results.. so you will see commercial cabinets and such with finishes that are done on an assembly line type application. UV cured coatings etc.
