Paint the Rainbow!

Tops and their finished look

After matching the tops and their handles with color, then at least two coats of shellac.  In between each coat you have to sand the layers to make sure there aren't any bumps.

Shellac is frowned upon currently because it reacts to water.  Think about the white rings on your grandmother's table.  BUT and this is HUGE shellac as a base coat provides great build or depth of color in the finish. 

What does that mean?  Depth of finish creates more refractive light to see the wood.  Or, it looks better. 

We use a poly as a top coat to protect against water and many other solvents like alcohol.  Solvents - dissolve finish.  Shellac is based in alcohol so if rubbing alcohol spills on it - it gets gooey and smudgey and basically ruins your day.

The is the bare handle                                                 Handle with color on it

 

 

 

In the last photo you can see how the colors blend into the bowl and look like a matching piece.  Some of the intensity is lost with applying another coat of shellac, snading that down with 600 grit sand paper and proceeding with the poly coats of finish. 

 

 

 

 

Color; what to do when you parts don't match

Color.  Sometimes we need to adjust the color.

In making Handles for shave bowls, sometimes we have to use regular maple instead of spalted.  Luckily, we have a source in Maine that rescues wood from a toy manufacturing plant and we can take those scraps in still make a wooden handle that is still up cycled from wood that could potentially end up in the trash.

The only "problem" is that the wood is light maple without any spalting.

So, the non color of the handle is much lighter than the bottom and would look hinkey.  In several handles are quite different than the bowls' lids:

The next posts will describe different ways to even out the color and it will produce handles that beautifully match the bowls and their tops.