Shellac Pine Flooring

This knowledge is equal parts gross and fascinating to me.

Shellac pine flooring.

Shellac is a versatile non toxic wood finish that enhances the natural grain while adding smoothness without the plastic like qualities of polyurethane or lacquer. Shellac also blocks the resin from pine knots and very oily exotic woods which can slow the drying of lacquer and varnish significantly. In the north tight grained old growth eastern white pine is still going strong in many homes. But notice that the first three situations are all refinishing problems not new wood problems and the last is rare for professional finishers.

Shellac is easy to apply and with just a little practice you can get professional looking results quickly and easily. Apply it with a natural bristle brush or with a cotton rag. It comes from the resin secreted by a lac bug found in india and thailand. Unlike synthetic urethanes shellac is a natural resin that is derived from the lac beetle and diluted with.

Without shellac pine s pitch can bleed into oil based finishes leaving fissures or shiny spots that remain tacky especially around knots. The earliest wood floors usually softwoods such as pine were often never finished. It also comes in solid form or in flakes that must be dissolved and it has a shorter shelf life than other finishes. As manufacturing and railroads made paints and coatings more available after 1860 varnish shellac and other clear hard finishes became popular for woodwork.

Shellac prepares the dyed surface for glazing step 4. Varnish and shellac are two of the most commonly used pine wood finishes on the market today. Shellac is a beautiful finish over every kind of wood imaginable including oak pine cherry mahogany birch chestnut maple as well as exotic and tropical woods such as ipe cocobolo australian cypress and many others. Shellac is available in most home centers as a liquid in a can.

The resin is scraped from trees and then diluted or processed in denatured alcohol when used for flooring purposes. Some shellac manufacturers recommend using it as a protective coat on non wood items. Shellac finishes were common on wood floors until urethanes became more widely accepted. Shellac can appear glossier than varnish but requires several coats to achieve that high shine finish.

Varnish is typically heavier than shellac and will usually require only one maybe two coats to finish. However shellac is about as natural as it gets for a wood flooring finish.