The Good News Is…

…The other side of the doors are tinted shellac and not paint. The bad news is, the other side of the doors is tinted shellac and not plain shellac. It takes a lot more effort to get through the tinted shellac than just the plain stuff. At first I thought maybe it was paint over shellac but it is definitely tinted shellac because I can get through it with just alcohol. Also, you can tell the way it comes off with the heat gun - the smell and texture - that it is shellac and not paint.

I started with the heat gun to get the flat rails and stiles. This gets just about everything and then I go over it with the alcohol and steel wool. Even after one pass with #2 steel wool you can still see a sheen of shellac and the wood is a little darker than it should be. I will need to go over it again

The panels have their own issues. They pretty much have to be done completely with alcohol and steel wool because it is very hard to scrap the detail by using the heat gun. I go through a lot of paper towels and steel wool but it is coming off. Now that I think about it, I might try heating it with the heat gun and then scraping with the steel wool and alcohol. Even with out scraping, the heat gun sort of brings it off the surface and makes the shellac brittle.

I’m working kind of slow and taking a lot of breaks because I’m sort of not really into it today. Even so, I should be able to get one side done today. That is, if I don’t run out of paper towels - again! I'll post some pics tomorrow.