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Then came the filling coat. It was my first time applying shellac in my life to any object so I was curious if I can do it. I worked with a brush by the way.
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I did a good a few coats (actually 6 coats), each has 7 days between them.
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At last it was time to give it some color. I applied a 1000 grit sanding with a baby-oil (odorless, thin, evaporates quick-ish and contains paraffin) then the surface was ready to color.
I cut a cork into half and used as a sanding block. It's practical to use a little pressure with it and since it has a round outer surface it can also be used in curved edges easily...
Looking great Singulum. Love the decal you came up with, looks very professional to me! The shellac also looks great. How are you plannng to apply the colour?
cheers,
Gav.
I always wanted a hot rod red Fender Stratocaster since high school. So I decided to finish this with red. Coloring shellac was a question for me but I did some research and boiled my formula again with food coloring powder (I couldn't find the word sorry :) )
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The red color was O.K. but I didn't get a satisfying result on my scrap bass wood pieces. Then I tried to give the color transitions.
I boiled 3 colored shellac formulas. Yellow, Orange and Red. Light to dark, I applied them till I get each of them good in color.
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The Yellow was easy to work with and 3 coats (each of them has two ways - going down / going up - and all of them has 1 week delay)
Then came the orange... I couldn't guess it was the trickiest color :)
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I did a first coat of it but I was scared. It wasn't good. Anyway, I went on.
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Second coat was merely ok but there were lots of spots to be retouched.
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Then the 3rd layer. The color was now beginning to get set.
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4th one :)
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This looked pretty to me so it was The Red calling me :)
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I did a 5 layer of red color. Each of them had 7 days delay and after the final red I waited for 2 weeks to get it set. After 2 weeks, I covered my red color with 5 layers of my primary (filling coat) colorless shellac. I waited 7 days between each layers and after the last layer I gave 2 weeks to get it set.
After that, I did another oiled sanding upto 2000 grit. Beginning with 1000 followed by 1200 - 1500 - 1800. When finished 2000 grit, I applied another layer of colorless shellac, sanded again, shellac again and one final 2000 grit sanding with baby-oil.
It was now time to begin a polishing phase, I boiled another shellac formula but this time I used brown shellac flakes. The filling coat and the colors were white shellac gums.
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Polishing balls. It just has cotton pieces inside ( I didn't use wool ) and an old t-shirt on the outside.
I didn't always work on my project with an empty stomach ;)
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That colour and finish looks amazing Singulum.