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Shellac is one of my favorite finishes because of it’s quick dry properties. With shellac you can start and finish a wood finishing project in one day. Shellac is very user-friendly too. Shellac washes out of your brushes and rollers with ammonia and water, then a clean water rinse.
How to Apply Shellac
Application of shellac
Using a brush
Most of the time you will be applying shellac with a brush. While you will get good results with either a natural bristle brush (white or black china bristle) or with a good nylon polyester synthetic brush, my choice it the latter because I like to wash out the shellac brushes with ammonia and water. If you choose to use a natural bristle brush, I would wash the used brush out with denatured alcohol rather than ammonia and water at the end of the day. Natural bristle brushes do not hold up well when washed out with water, the bristles will “spring” and are hard to return to their natural form after this.
You must work efficiently at a good pace when brushing shellac to prevent lapping marks or ridges. This is not a great concern if you are using shellac as a sealer coat(s) under an oil varnish finish coat, since you will be sanding it out before varnishing anyway.
I use a foam roller with shellac for a couple of reasons. The most important reason is that a foam roller is lint free. You don’t want a stray nap hair laying in your clear finish. Foam rollers will apply the coating rather thinly which is optimal with a clear finish like shellac. Roll on a section and lay it off (lightly smooth it out) with the tips of your brush then move on to the next section etc….
Spaying shellac
Shellac is a pleasure to spray. No thinning is necessary normally, but if you do thin use only a small amount of denatured alcohol as required. The most common sprayer used for clear shellac is the HVLP sprayer. HVLP’s are fine finish sprayers using “high volume” of air at “low pressure”. You must use the proper paint particulate and vapor respirator as well as allow for good ventilation (without allowing the dry spray in the air to drift throughout the house or get sucked into the ventilation system). Spraying works best in a new construction environment or in a spray booth, but can be done in a garage or large backyard (on a non-windy day) etc….
Filter the shellac through a fine mesh cup gun strainer as you pour the shellac into the paint cup. Filtering will keep the gun from clogging as well as to keep the surface clean of large dry bits of shellac and other debris.
Use good spray technique, overlapping 50% on each pass and keeping the spray gun at 6 - 8 inches from the surface and always spraying squarely the substrate (do not allow the gun to spray at an angle which will cause uneven application and dry spray).
Clean the spray gun with denatured alcohol (ammonia and water may rust some parts of certain HVLP guns).
Apply clear shellac with any of the above applicators as the situation best dictates and you will find shellac a joy to work with in your wood finishing endeavors.
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Don’t “back-track” when brushing shellac. Brush it on and if you missed a spot, get it on the next coat, or patch it in after the shellac is dry. Back-tracking and refreshing a semi-dry layer of shellac will cause brush marks, ridges and lapping.
Lay it on, lay it off and leave it.
Using a roller
You can roll shellac. If fact on large surfaces you probably will have to because it dries so quickly. You must “lay off” the rolled on shellac with the tips of a good brush to smooth out the roller stipple and break any air bubbles.
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Zinsser clear or amber shelllac at the Internet Paint Store
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