Simply moisten a rag with denatured alcohol and rub it into the surface in a circular motion. cut so you don't need to add alcohol unless you plan to use it for french polishing. Pure ethanol (ethyl alcohol) is the only practical choice for thinning shellac, cleaning brushes used for shellac or applying a French Polish.It was once sold here under the brand name, Klean Stripä.I used it with good results for years until I recently ran out. Best solvent for shellac is and always has been ethanol alcohol, not methanol alcohol. Removing Shellac With Solvents. The solvent used is denatured alcohol. The typical denatured formula consists of 190-proof ethanol, 4% methanol and 1% other denaturants. As I noted before, the gallon can in the fountain pen repair station in the service center was a … The alcohol will eventually soften the finish until it becomes sticky. https://www.popularwoodworking.com/.../methylated-spirits-best-solvent-shellac Denatured Alcohol is apparently no longer legal in CA (thanks, assholes) and the only online vendors that'll ship here are charging $20 for a $7 pint, which I refuse to pay. Can anyone guide me to what else will work. It seems that every time someone asks about shellac, we get a series of opinions about what it should be disolved in. You want to use Zinsser SealCoat, which is a de-waxed shellac. You can remove shellac with a variety of solvents, including denatured alcohol. Zinsser is a 3 lb. Chris Schwarz in short uses Everclear to dissolve the shellac flakes as opposed to denatured alcohol for reason being that everclear dissolves the flakes completely while the latter doesn't. Along with many other brands it was once widely available. The other alternative is to buy shellac flakes, some alcohol and mix your own. Any “Denatured” alcohol product is poisonous, no matter if it started out as grain alcohol (the drinking kind) or wood alcohol or any other kind. I use it regularly and it works well. It's already been thinned to a 2 lb. I know for a fact that the shellac that Sheaffer used was Zinsser. My question is inspired from a recent article from Lost art press on mixing shellac. I need to thin some shellac and here in Canada we cannot buy Denatured Alcohol (or at least I cannot find any) I can get Shellac thinner from Lee Valley at $14.50 per litre but I was hoping for something a little less expensive. While this method is messy to clean up, it is the least labor-intensive. Denatured alcohol is used because it is extremely high proof. You can also buy shellac premixed, it's slightly cheaper than polyurethane. Shellac: The natural choice. Problem is 99.9% technical grade (or 200 proof) is only sold at laboratory supply, and 95% pure grade called 190 proof grain alcohol is hard to find at many liqueur stores. This high concentration enables the denatured alcohol to dissolve the shellac flakes quickly and effectively. This traditional finish comes from natural resins secreted by the lac bug. The word, denatured says it all, something was done to a natural product to change it’s natural characteristics. These secretions are collected and processed into flakes that dissolve in ethyl or denatured alcohol. cut (3 lbs of shellac flakes to a gallon of alcohol). This is the SealCoat: What are some tested, good alternatives for dissolving shellac? Basically, any alcohol will do, but the preferred alcohol is ethanol (the same stuff sold in liquor stores), which, unless you you want to pay exhorbitant prices (tax), is commonly sold for finishing purposes as "denatured alcohol". 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