Forty Years Later - Shellac for my chairs

How many of us used Shellac to treat our plain wooden floors in Sibu and in the homes along the Rajang Basin?

I lived in a wooden house in Kung Ping Road (later Brooke Drive)in Sibu for many years and the floors were all shellacked by my mother herself with our help. We would do it at night when everyone was asleep. At that time the term DIY was not in our dictionary. But at that impressionable age I was pretty proud of my mother. She did quite a lot of things from scratch and when I became a mother and wife later I could never rise to her level or standard.

Mum always believed that a shellac floor was tidier and easier to keep clean. And we used the real thing at that time having the crush the shellac flakes into the thinner and mixing it well. It was sticky and smelly but our floors were beautiful and memorable.

Did you know that Shellac is a resin secreted by the female lac bug to form a cocoon, on trees in the forests of India and Thailand?

It is processed and sold as dry flakes , which are dissolved in denatured alcohol to make liquid shellac, which is used as a brush-on colorant, food glaze and wood finish much like a combination of stain and polyurethane. Shellac functions as a tough all-natural primer, sanding sealer, tannin-blocker, odor-blocker, stain (pigment), and high-gloss varnish. Shellac was also once used in electrical applications as it possesses good insulation qualities and it seals out moisture.

It is also often the only historically-appropriate finish for early 20th-century hardwood floors, and wooden wall and ceiling paneling.

From the time it replaced oil and wax finishes in the 1800s, shellac was the dominant wood finish in the western world until it was replaced by nitrocellulose lacquer in the 1920s and 1930s. It remained popular in the Southern United States through the 1950s and 1960s. It continues to be a popular candy glaze for pill shaped sweets such as Skittles.

A bottle of Shellac Flat, used to reduce the glossiness of shellac.Shellac comes in many warm colours, ranging from a very light blond ("platina") to a very dark brown ("garnet"), with all shades of brown and yellow and orange and red in between. The colour is influenced by the sap of the tree the lac bug is living on, as well as the time of harvest. Historically, the most commonly-sold shellac is called "orange shellac", and was used extensively as a combination stain and protectant on wood paneling and cabinetry in the 20th-century (see photo at right).

Shellac was once very common, being available any place paints or varnishes were sold (such as hardware stores). Cheaper, clear, more abrasion- and chemical-resistant items (such as polyurethane) have almost completely replaced it in the world of decorative residential wood finishing (such as for hardwood floors, wooden wainscoting and plank paneling, and kitchen cabinets). Such things, however, must be applied over a stain if the user wants the wood coloured; shellac wasn't applied over a stain, as it was orange/amber in colour by itself, and so functioned as a combination stain and protective topcoat. These modern chemicals, while some come closer than others, can never completely replicate the warm, inviting glow that shellac lends to wood. "Wax over shellac" (an application of buffed-on paste wax over several coats of shellac) is often regarded as the most beautiful finish for hardwood floors.[4]

Shellac flakes are hard to find now. Some specialty woodworking shops offer it as a special-order item. There are a few specialty companies dedicated exclusively to it, such as [1]. Zinsser offers a pre-mixed liquid preparation of waxy (non-dewaxed) shellac, in both "amber" (roughly Waxy Orange) and "clear" (roughly Waxy Platina), which is sold at Lowes and Home Depot.



Some interesting trivia :

It takes about 100,000 lac bugs to make 500 g of shellac flakes.
Shellac is UV-resistant, and does not darken as it ages (though the wood under it may do so on its own, as in the case of pine).
Shellac scratches less easily than lacquer, and damaged areas can easily be touched-up with another coat of shellac (unlike with polyurethane) because the new coat melds itself into the existing coat(s).

Source : Wikipedia®