That is beautiful. (the guitar)

Blood is hollywood - The Red Violin to be precise.

Bowed string instruments use either an oil varnish or a spirit varnish. My viola (I'm a musician) has a nice soft lustre oil varnish.

I'm trying to get some amber shellac too - my local store only carries clear. I'm hoping Home Despot will be able to help me out.

Apparently, you should make sure it's FRESH! So check the can date or use dry flakes (just learned this) and from reading other threads, www.shellac.net has good variety as well as prices. But why is the use of shellac instrument specific? Just how history turned out or has a specific influence on the instruments themselves...?

I hear some paint stores may carry it...at the very least I would assume they carry the premixed kind. I get by with it, but I keep meaning to check a nearby woodworking store. I am lucky to have a local place called Handyman (they are part of the True Value Retail Co-op) that seems to have what I need. I really like that they sell nuts, bolts, and a ton of other small bits like that in single units, so I leave paying with pocket change instead of buying 3 boxes of different hex bolts that I only need one of.

I am in the middle of a project of making my own cotton tape, and the next iteration should be final, so I am going to look at that wood store to see if I can't find flakes.

EDIT: D. Newton how long have you been doing that? Do you just finish or are you a Luthier? It looks good, I have been wanting to learn french polishing.

Yes, I'm a guitar builder, since '75. That is a ukulele I'm showing there, but you can see the little french polish pad and an oil dropper as well as the shellac in the bottle.
I changed over to french polishing when nitrocellulose lacquer started messing with my brain, it is nasty stuff, as well as other finishes. Shellac is non-toxic, but I wear gloves because of the denatured alcohol.
You can read on-line about french polish, google "milburn french polish tutorial" but it really helps to have some one-on-one with a teacher.
French polish finish is deceptively simple, but an instrument finish is a steep learning curve.

There are so many things I like about it, traditional, natural, comparatively low materials cost, and repairability. Crack you nitro finish and you can be looking at refinishing from scratch.

Either will do.

As the 'con-man' said while being interviewed on the radio today:

"Nobody buys a drill because they want a drill... they buy a drill because they want a hole".

Agreed. And the odor and vapors of denatured alcohol is much more user friendly than lacquer thinner or spirits. I use shellac exclusively on my small furniture pieces and I find David's post regarding finishing stringed instruments with shellac very interesting. I've never heard of that before. I can imagine getting the "build" enough for a ukulele or guitar must be very time consuming.

I love this. I'm sure I'll be quoting this guy.

Maybe for the first drill, after that, you just want a newer, fancier, drill.

i'm not a vegan, but creating shellac is a horrible process.

Approximately 300,000 lac insects are killed to produce 1kg of lac.
Lac is made up of 25% insect debris.
Annual production of lac is estimated at 20,000 tonnes globally.

https://www.vegansociety.com/resource...s/shellac.aspx

it is used a lot in makeup and several of your favorite candies.

A man said this?! I mean, yes, I buy tools to achieve a job... But I also just want the tools.

Nooooo are you serious?! Well how do we quantify this? In terms of insect lives lost? Carbon output? How does this compare to the synthetics production in lacquer or polyurethane/varnish (do these even decompose?). If I had to choose between something that ultimately breaks down and returns to the life cycle vs. something semi-permanent, I'd choose the compostable material. As an aside, insects have been predicted to become a major nutrition resource in the future (high protein, vitamins, etc). So what do you suggest I, or people, do? I guess I could just keep the cloth plain...

Edit: After reading the article, it sounds like they need to plant trees to harvest the lac. I guess in my mind the battle to be green needs to be prioritized. Cows, for example, is the #1 carbon producer in the world, over transportation, so I eat little to no beef. I try to stay away from synthetics. Try to live simply and recycle. I don't tend to bother myself with "green" tire patches (recent thread) and probably will sleep ok knowing about shellac production...unless you can convince me otherwise (and I love to be convinced!)

20,000 tonnes annually so 20M kg, which is 6X10^12 insect lives lost annually. 25% of bugs remain in shellac so we eat it when we take pills or eat candy. But then again we also ingest a whole bunch of insects just by breathing (during sleep, riding our bikes, etc) haha. Oye*

You know the insects are dead, right?
Because the insects and trees are valuable to the many small villages in India that produce the raw shellac, they nurture them.
They, the insects, trees, and villagers would most likely be extinct if not for their monetary value.

not to derail the thread entirely, but you should read the positive effects of grass-fed/pastured beef if you are concerned about being green. not only is grass-fed beef one of the healthiest things to eat, it is also good for the environment.

Well I'm a bit skeptical about this comment, in the big picture sense that is. Foremost, it's outrageously expensive and makes up maybe a tiny tiny fraction of the beef industry, which I would rather not support. I do not deny that it is fantastic, Kobe beef for one is off the charts delicious. Actually it seems that whenever you have wild or well farmed animals, they are both nutritious and delicious. The problem is with industrial farming and overconsumption in most cases, and the ensuing personal and societal costs that follow. And I don't think I would be helping anything by increasing my consumption of grass-fed beef, and I certainly don't think the world would be better without D. Newton's guitars, and the music created by them. I rather just keep things simple, which in this case is just eat less beef... and just use a little bit of shellac... =P

To be green in my mind, is to see the big picture and not sweat the small stuff.

Try a little & let us know. That 30% water generally has a huge negative effect on the solvency power of the alcohol.

Ugh I'm getting a headache. =P Rootboy is sending me a small bag of flakes so it's sort of a one shot deal... so I might just suck it up and get denatured alcohol, which from what I read is about 90% ethyl alcohol and 10% "other stuff". Since I'm not burning it in a stove, I think people's concerns about impurities don't apply here? But laziness sometimes triumphs... Either way I will let people know and take before and after pics (not sure what color I will end up with, letting fate decide) on this thread. =)

At least here, you can buy a small bottle of ethyl alcohol, a quart or maybe less, at the pharmacy for a couple of bucks.

Is there a way I can buy shellac that has a higher kill rate than 30k insects/kg? Because that really just turns me on. Maybe there is a way of making it from kittens too.

First thing I thought of was furry handlebars =7 Ok off to the pharmacy...

You're welcome to come and scrape the bugs off my car's front number plate and headlamps if you want - must be more than 30k of the little critters pasted on there!

Maybe you could use a squirrel.

Bug excretions. Tree resins. Condensed dinosaurs. It's a tough choice.

If you really want to do some bugs you should wrap your bars in silk tape, then shellac it.
I think the shellac feels better than varnish to the fingers. Kind of hard to quantify that one. I used to use it as a primer when I was a painter (the artist kind).
That denatured alcohol is hard stuff to beat. I'm not sure what the environmental consequences are but I know it gives me a screaming headache. Still, it's better than anything other than virgin acetone (which is getting pretty hard to find).