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I also use Sharpies/Texta/OHP pens exclusively but notice that the surface you use them on also needs to be clean. If you are in the habit of spraying your metal stocks with WD40 or other oily substances to minimise rust then be prepared to clean it off well before using marker pens, but then i guess that's the same with other layout fluid?

I had not considered flakes - that sounds like what you are looking at. I am currently in the middle of polishing our yacht club tables & use it to kill the silicons after stripping & sanding which cause fish eye in the finish coats. Cost of the shellac is in the region of £ 100 per 5 litres. I need all of that poss a bit more. I will google shellac flakes & see what that comes up with

Sam, if you are going to make your own shellac then you will need some clear Meth. spirit too.

After dissolving the shellac it will need filtering, for this I use muslin cloth, you may need to filter twice to get rid of small hard bits.

Clive

I trust you know what the 'small hard bits' are.

If you buy shellac, flake or otherwise, from a reliable source, not trying to get the lowest price possible, you should not find any 'small hard bits'. Even now in 2017 those bits, which are not at all healthy in concentration, may be found in shellac as it arrives from Asia.

Shellac is a product of the Lac beetle. Look it up. Wikipedia has a long article on the subject. The process is not exactly as that article says. If you watch the process at first hand, at least in the former colonies of the Raj, the deposit is not scraped off but the twigs are / were heated by villagers over an open flame. The lac melted and was colected in bowls. Subsequent processing is used for purification.

Latterly the process has been updated as the producer countries have industrialised.

Shellac is used in and on foods! Price is a good indicator of quality.

Jerry

Yes , fair point. 1 KG makes about 4 litres of shellac less any waste & that uses £ 30-00 of meths on top of the cost of the flakes.

In my joinery days I employed a polisher who was the fussiest old boy under the sun. If i ordered white button polish he would want brown. if i ordered Colron dye he would want Rustins & so on. In the end I used to send him to the supplier to get the stuff himself & let him get on with it.

So in the winter last year when my yacht club asked if i could polish a table top ( ended up it is going to be about 20 by the end of this winter) I realised that I could not remember how to do it. So i had to go through an embarrassing rapid re learning process. When I hit the fish eye problem I had to really search the memory bank to remember that one has to overcoat the stain with shellac to seal the silicons in. These are still in the wood from years of wax polishing even though I have stripped the entire tables back to bare wood without any strippers etc. Only scrappers & sandpaper.

I have just finished building some lounge seating & rather stupidly offered to upholster them using old sails. Not sure if they will go for that, but if they do i might be in trouble because the last time I did that was as a teenager !! That will really exercise the brain.

No wonder the traction engine build is going slow !!!!!

Sorry to Hijack the thread

Thanks to everyone for the advice. (I don't think I'll go the shellac route!)

In he UK, the alcohol you need to dissolve the Shellac is made to stink of pyridine, and is unpleasant to work with over any period. My answer is to visit a French DIY store when there, and buy their equivalent 'alcohol a bruler'. This tends to have a much nicer smell, as it is made from excess brandy production, and smells like it.

While in the shop, you can stock up on other solvents in litre bottles, such as naptha, methanol, and acetone, useful for lots of things not connected with marking fluid or shellac.

Cheers, Tim