Repairing old shellac
 

Ok guys here is the before of a bad area where the shellac is brown thick and dull. I used an old singer oil bottle to hold the linseed oil and a small mouthwash bottle for the denatured alcohol. Now wrap you finger with the t-shirt or tighty whitesl and no Miriam Lowes does not seel them:D

repair of shellac
 

Now that you have you finger wrapped dip it in the alcohol and put two drops or three on the tip. Apply in a circular motion to melt and blend the old shellac the quickly go in one direction until there are no cloth marks. I just got a PM from Laura and said she had wonderful results after she tried it. I gave her direction thru PM she was really ready to try it. Please do not stop on the machine or you will stick continue motion off the surface.

repair of shellac
 

After about two minutes of rubbing this is the end results. This can be done on the whole of the machine until smooth. There is one more step after this but it is just adding more shellac to protect the decals and the machine. Now this does not repair the dings in the japan I can tell you about that later. I want you to do this first and get confortable with it.

This is an old 66 with silvered decals but the process is the same. this process will not hurt the decals because you will not be going over them yet. The final step is adding more shellac to protect the decals but we are not ready for this yet. I hope I am making myself clear here. Tex Jan is watching to correct my mistakes I hope..

Skip

Skip

And Charlee don't refer to my hand as our friend:D:D

~snicker~ Ok...I won't...but I can't promise not to check it out!! :D :D :D

Now...question. Will the naptha (lighter fluid) be safe for the decals?

No it will not hurt the decals. you are simply swapin quickly to remove the old oil from the machine before we repair the shellac. Skip

It is making sense to me, Skip. Just be sure to stay away from the decals when doing this, right???

Texas Jan

He said to go over the whole machine and it wouldn't hurt the decals

This procedure will not hurt the decals but you stay way from them until the rest of machine is smooth. We will go over the decals with more shellac and linseed oil to protect. I don't want you to get get carried away with the rubbing and abrat the decals. When you have finsihed this smoothing then I will show you how to add more shellace to protect the machine. One step at a time. Jan is right don't over do things yet. Get the feel of melting the shellac smooth again.