How to Read a Bag of Shellac

Open our shellac collection and you will see a row of grades that runs from nearly water-pale to deep garnet. It looks like a paint chart. It is not. Each step along that range is a different material with a different process behind it, and the words on the bag — dewaxed, button, seedlac, Kusmi, 2-lb cut — are not marketing. They are a short, precise description of what is inside. Once you can read them, choosing the right shellac gets simple.

Here is how to read the bag.

The one idea: color is process, not cosmetics

Shellac begins as a resin secreted by the lac insect on host trees in India. Raw off the branch it carries a natural red lac dye, plus the debris of the forest — sand, twigs, bits of bark. Washing removes the impurities and, with them, some of the dye. So refining does two things at once: it cleans the resin and it lightens it.

Follow that through and the whole range makes sense. A pale grade has been washed and filtered more, from better starting resin. More refining means more material lost along the way, and the lightest grades can only be reached from the best raw lac to begin with — no amount of processing turns a coarse, dark batch into a true platina. That is why the palest shellac is the rarest and costs the most. Lightness is earned.

It also means the darker grades are not lesser. They simply carry more of their own natural color, which is exactly what you want when warmth is the point.

The forms — and when to reach for each

Color tells you how far the resin was refined. Form tells you how it was processed, and form is usually what decides the grade for a given job.

Seedlac (raw) → Button lac (heritage) → Wax-in flake (heritage, flaked) → Dewaxed flake (modern, clear)

Seedlac — the raw form. Washed and sieved, not melted or refined further. It keeps its full natural wax and a little of the field character of the resin. Seedlac is the starting material for everything else, and it is a finish in its own right — the choice of the finisher who wants the resin as close to the tree as it comes, and of the violin makers whose old spirit-varnish recipes call for it by name. Strain your cut; it carries more sediment than the refined forms.

Button lac — the heritage form. Seedlac melted over a fire, filtered through cloth and dropped onto a cool surface to set into discs — buttons — in small workshops that have done it the same way for generations. It keeps its natural wax (a few percent) and the working character that goes with it. This is the form the old finishing manuals were written about and the form French polishers reach for: it pads out and builds the way the tradition describes, with a warmth in the film that the modern forms do not carry. Break the buttons up before they go in the alcohol; whole, they take their time.

Wax-in flake — the heritage chemistry, in flake. Button lac's near sibling: the same wax-containing resin, sheeted thin and broken into flake instead of pressed into discs. Same warm character, and the flake dissolves faster at the bench. Reach for it when you want a wax-in shellac and prefer flake to buttons. On our shelf this is the Lemon family — and Black shellac, the darkest thing we sell, is a wax-in flake too.

Dewaxed flake — the modern, clear form. Shellac with its natural wax removed by solvent processing, then decolorised by filtration to the grade wanted, dried and broken into thin, glassy flake. Held up to a window, it lets the light through. With the wax gone, the film dries clearer and the material behaves the same bag to bag, which is why it is the workhorse of modern shops.

One thing dewaxed has never been shown to be: harder or more durable than wax-in shellac. Nobody has produced the data either way, and the old work that survives was finished with shellac as it comes, wax and all, and we have written at length about where the "always use dewaxed" rule actually came from. What dewaxed genuinely buys you is compatibility. Under an oil-based polyurethane or a waterborne finish, the wax in a wax-in shellac can interfere with the coat going on top; dewaxed will not. Lacquer and traditional varnish are fine over either.

The dewaxed shellac color names, lightest to darkest

The names are conventions, not standards — one refiner's Blonde can be another's Super Blonde — so read them as steps on a ladder rather than fixed points. Ours, in order:

Platina. The palest. Nearly colorless in a thin cut; used where the wood's own color must come through untouched — pale maple, spruce, blond instrument tops.

Super Blonde. Very pale, a faint straw. The most-used dewaxed grade in the catalog and the standard clear sealer.

Blonde. Light straw. A touch more warmth than Super Blonde; still reads as "clear" on most woods.

Beige. Between blonde and amber; a soft honey.

Amber. The color most people picture when they picture shellac. Deepens cherry, mahogany and walnut without shifting them.

Ruby. A red-leaning deep amber. For warmth with a red cast.

Garnet. The darkest. Adds a deep red-brown as it builds; the restorer's grade for putting a century of age on a surface — reversibly.

Button lac and seedlac carry their own names, tied to the harvest rather than to a refining step. More on that next.

Harvest and source: the words that only some bags earn

Shellac is a crop. It has seasons, host trees and varieties, and for the heritage forms the variety is part of what you are buying. When a bag of ours carries a harvest name or a numbered lot, that is a claim about that bag, and we only make it when we can stand behind it.

Kusmi is the most sought-after variety — the lac insect on the Kusum tree, harvested in winter in smaller volumes. Kusmi resin is naturally lighter and has a longer life, which is a real, measured property rather than a figure of speech: how long the molten resin stays workable through refining, and how long the flake stays good on your shelf. When a button lac can carry the Kusmi name, that is the top of the range talking.

Jethwa is the late-summer crop from the same Kusum trees, often mixed with other species like Ber. It runs to deeper, warmer color — the natural home of our darker buttons. Exceptional golden buttons can also come from the Jethwa crop, as in our Aruna grade: Jeth harvest, Kusum trees, meticulous seedlac selection, washed to a warm golden hue.

Bysakhi is named for the month of Baisakh, mid-April. Genuine Bysakhi has grown scarce, and much of what reaches the market under the name is loosely sourced. The refining family we buy our buttons and seedlac from supplies Bysakhi only when they can stand behind the crop, and declines it outright when they cannot. When we have it, it says so on the bag. When we don't, we don't rename something else.

Our button lac and seedlac come from a fifth-generation refining family in India who have supplied this business for three decades. Our dewaxed flake is refined industrially, in modern plants — some in Germany, some in India. Different material, different story, and the bag only tells the story that belongs to it.

A word on "bleached" shellac — and why ours isn't

You will see white shellac sold cheaply as powder or granule. That product is reached a different way: with chemical bleaching agents. It is the fast route to a pale color, and it comes with trade-offs finishers learn to avoid — residual chlorine in the resin, higher moisture, a short shelf life, and a film that does not last.

Our dewaxed grades get their color the slow way — solvent dewaxing, then washing and filtration to lift color. No hypochlorite, no chemical bleach, in either of our refining lanes. That is why a true pale dewaxed costs what it does and keeps the way it does: the lightness was filtered in, not bleached in.

Reading the bag

Put it together and a label reads like a sentence. Ours carry the Chestnut Hollow name — the product brand on every retail bag we pack — with Shellac.net as the merchant behind it. Here is what the rest of the words mean.

Dewaxed / Wax-in. Whether the natural wax has been removed. Dewaxed for clarity and for going under poly or waterborne; wax-in for French polish, period work, and any finish where the shellac is the topcoat.

The color name. Platina to Garnet on dewaxed flake; a harvest or lot name on buttons and seedlac. A step on the ladder, not a standard.

Harvest, lot, host tree. Only on bags that earn it — buttons and seedlac from a named crop. If a bag has no harvest line, that is not a gap; that shellac simply doesn't have that kind of story, and we don't invent one.

Net weight. Shellac flake is sold by weight, and the cut is figured by weight. A quarter-pound bag makes about a quart of 2-lb cut.

"Cut." The bag may suggest one. A pound cut is the number of pounds of dry flake dissolved in one gallon of alcohol — so a 2-lb cut is two pounds per gallon, which scales to about four ounces of flake per quart. A 1-lb cut is a sealer or a wash coat; 2-lb is the general-purpose starting point; 3-lb builds fast. The pound cut chart does the arithmetic for any volume.

How to choose — by what you're making

• Clear, pale work that should disappear into the wood → the palest dewaxed grades: Platina or Super Blonde.
• Warmth — deepening cherry, mahogany, walnut → Amber, Ruby or Garnet dewaxed. The color is natural lac dye doing exactly what you want.
• French polishing and period restoration → button lac. The wax and the fire-refining give the padding feel and the build the tradition is built on.
• A sealer under polyurethane or a waterborne finish → dewaxed, any color. Wax-free is what lets the next coat bond.
• Making your own cuts from the raw resin, or a recipe that names it → seedlac.
• A wax-in shellac, but in flake → Lemon wax-in flake; Black shellac for shading and simulated age.

If you are between two grades, the color range is forgiving — a half-step lighter or darker rarely changes the job. Form is the decision that matters most.

Start here

• Clarity and pale, modern work → Dewaxed Shellac Flake
• French polishing and heritage work → Button Lac
• The raw resin, your own cuts → Seedlac
• Wax-in flake → Shellac Flakes — Wax In
• How much to weigh out → The Pound Cut Chart
• Which alcohol → What Actually Dissolves Shellac

Nothing hidden. Nothing added.