Shellac Pine Flooring

Shellac is easy to apply and with just a little practice you can get professional looking results quickly and easily.

Shellac pine flooring.

You can brush on wipe on with a rag or spray on. Unlike synthetic urethanes shellac is a natural resin that is derived from the lac beetle and diluted with. 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. Varnish is typically heavier than shellac and will usually require only one maybe two coats to finish.

Some shellac manufacturers recommend using it as a protective coat on non wood items. This knowledge is equal parts gross and fascinating to me. Shellac also blocks the resin from pine knots and very oily exotic woods which can slow the drying of lacquer and varnish significantly. Though not often used one of the best finishes for pine is shellac which is attractive nontoxic once dry and resists the resins in pine.

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. It comes from the resin secreted by a lac bug found in india and thailand. Shellac prepares the dyed surface for glazing step 4. As manufacturing and railroads made paints and coatings more available after 1860 varnish shellac and other clear hard finishes became popular for woodwork.

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. It also comes in solid form or in flakes that must be dissolved and it has a shorter shelf life than other finishes. The earliest wood floors usually softwoods such as pine were often never finished.

Apply it with a natural bristle brush or with a cotton rag. In the north tight grained old growth eastern white pine is still going strong in many homes. Without shellac pine s pitch can bleed into oil based finishes leaving fissures or shiny spots that remain tacky especially around knots. But notice that the first three situations are all refinishing problems not new wood problems and the last is rare for professional finishers.

Shellac finishes were common on wood floors until urethanes became more widely accepted. However shellac is about as natural as it gets for a wood flooring finish.