Shellac on a pine ceiling


Bombarde16

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Putting a tongue & groove ceiling in a bathroom.  Picked through the bunk of 1x6 "pattern boards" at Lowes and came up with just enough decent boards to do the job.  Some needed a little help with epoxy to fill in some shattered knots.

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While those are curing, I wanted to experiment with Zinsser's off-the-shelf shellac.  I've used the "clear" shellac for years and know it to be watery and crystal clear.  I made a first try with the "amber" shellac on a previous project and found it to be a gooey, grabby, waxy, orange sludge.  Here's hoping the Aristotelian happy point is some mixture of the two.

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Sure enough, somewhere between 2:1 and 3:1 clear to amber was what I wanted.  Gives a hint of warmth to the bare pine but still goes on easy.  Yes, by now I'm far enough down the rabbit hole that I should be buying flakes and mixing my own like a true shellac snob.  In this case, though, I've got ceilings and a dozen doors to do; so being able to grab big quantities off the shelf is helpful.

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5 minutes ago, drzaius said:

I can't see why that wouldn't work. It would give the pine a nice color. But I'd want to put some kind of flattening agent in it to knock the shine off it.

The shine doesn't bother me as much as the tendency towards an uneven shine.  Straight off the brush, the denser parts of the grain will start to build a glossy film while the soft, earlywood is still slurping finish in.  When light hits the surface, the latewood (which should be dark) turns to a specular highlight while the earlywood (which should be lighter) looks dark by comparison.

Usual solution I've found has been to build another coat or three (until the earlywood is good and done) and then knock the surface down with a light abrasive, either sandpaper or steel wool and wax.

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4 minutes ago, Immortan D said:

Of course it's personal preference. I think the amber looks better because I don't like yellowish pine.

Fair enough.  The previous project was a bank of drawers inside a closet.  This is two coats of amber straight from the can onto construction lumber drawer fronts.

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Part of it's the blazing white, daylight balanced LED lighting.  Were this lit by old-fashioned incandescents, the warm "pumpkin pine" would probably fit right in.  In this case, it was just too orange for where I wanted to go.

The other part is the thickness.  I'm guessing Zinsser's clear is sold primarily as a blotch control "prefinish" whereas they really wanted the amber to be a standalone "finish finish".  (Am I right in recalling that one is dewaxed and one isn't?  Is one a heavier cut than the other?)  Anyway, brushing on the clear is idiot proof, whereas the amber really wants to leave tracks and uneven blotches if you're not careful.  I'll be doing this ceiling and the doors with a gun, but all the same I wanted to see if there was some happy balance between the two.

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I think you're right. I mix my own non-dewaxed flakes and the end result is similar to the amber Zinsser's you're using. I apply it with a cotton rag then wait a few minutes and polish with extra fine steel wool to remove any inconsistencies. I never got any blotches worth mentioning though, but I never used it on pine or oak.

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How would shellac be expected to hold up in a bathroom?   I have no idea how many thousands of square feet of Pine T&G that I've put up, and finished, but it's way more than a few.  Here it would be Yellow Pine though.   My standard finishing routine, done probably every year from 1974 until 2007 was a little color with MiniWax Puritan Pine 1/3, and Natural 2/3.  That's the last MinWax staining that I've stuck with.   Finish coat would be half flat, and half satin whatever was the current fad poly for spraying. 

It darkens over time anyway, so I didn't want to go too dark to start with.

My 101 year old Mother still lives in the house I built for them in 1974.  Nothing in it has ever been refinished, or repainted, and it all still looks fine.

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The country church my grandmother attended, and in whose cemetary she is buried, has a vaulted ceiling in the sanctuary. The ceiling and walls are finished with pine board paneling and coated with shellac. While not exactly experiencing the humidity of a bathroom, it is an uncoditioned space, six days of the week. The shellac looks as good as ever, after at least 60 years.

I think the only Zinnser product labeled as "dewaxed" is the Seal Coat stuff. Its a lighter cut than the clear or blonde. I agree with Carus, if the amber was gooey, it was prbably past the recommended shelf life. I've use it on several projects, and would never describe it as "goo". BTW, my favorite application method for shellac is to roll up a cotton rag and saturate it with denatured alcohol, then dip it into the dewaxed seal coat and rub that into the surface until it starts to build a film. Let it dry a few hours, lightly sand with 320, then switch to the thicker shellac to finish. Shellac dries so fast, you should never need to pause during the wipe-on phase, only allowing it to fully cure before sanding.

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A final coat of poly should seal up the surface from bathroom moisture. Mixing your own dewaxed flakes does produce a superior result, but it ain't cheap !

I've been using the plastic abrasive pads between coats for decades, the gray ones on clear finishes. Steel wool particles are hell to get rid of and eventually rust. One spark into steel wool and it turns into a glowing ember (learned that in Boy Scouts) old steel wool is a fire hazard !

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It's the Boy Scout secret to starting a fire with flint and steel. I started a ceremonial bonfire with just a flint and steel in front of the entire summer camp. Spent all day gathering a 100lbs of tiny twigs then surrounded those with gradually bigger sticks in the middle of log cabin stacked logs 6' tall .There was an entire pad of shredded 0000 steel wool in the center with a tunnel in the kindling for access. I was confident it would work but kind of alarmed at how fast the flames shot up.  I could hear the whole crowd gasp as I was rapidly retreating.

sorry for the hijack, back to your regularly scheduled programming <grin>

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12 minutes ago, wdwerker said:

It's the Boy Scout secret to starting a fire with flint and steel. I started a ceremonial bonfire with just a flint and steel in front of the entire summer camp. Spent all day gathering a 100lbs of tiny twigs then surrounded those with gradually bigger sticks in the middle of log cabin stacked logs 6' tall .There was an entire pad of shredded 0000 steel wool in the center with a tunnel in the kindling for access. I was confident it would work but kind of alarmed at how fast the flames shot up.  I could hear the whole crowd gasp as I was rapidly retreating.

sorry for the hijack, back to your regularly scheduled programming <grin>

Plane shavings, and dryer lint from cotton are almost the same. When i go camping i bring dryer lint plane shavings and a flint and steel. Haven't used a match to start a fire in probably 3 years. Some day I'll try the stick method.

I was also taught that shorting a 9v batter will ignite the steel wool just as well as a spark.

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While you all were indulging your inner pyrophilia, a buddy and I got four coats on the show faces.

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I'm out of town for next week, so these will have a few days respite and, one hopes, be ready for sanding and the next round when I get back.  FWIW, this was the maiden voyage of a Husky HVLP gun from Home Depot.  I'm a total noob at spraying finishes and this worked a treat right out of the box.

Sure is going to look pretty...and I'm thrilled that I won't have to tape any drywall on the ceiling.

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