Originally Posted by
KittyKat77
I am trying to fix up my Davis, and it is looking better... the black areas no longer have that icky sticky orange peel texture, BUT, some of the areas with the decals seem stubborn, and despite going very slow and cautious, I ended up with a bit of silvering. It may be the damaged shellac is adhered so strongly to the decals that anything affecting the shellac will damage the decals. Talk about a catch-22. It's made me nervous to continue!
I have been focusing instead on cleaning and rust-removal of the metal pieces.
Clean the decals first with sewing machine oil then apply a little shellac over them to protect them. Then continue. Remember the decals have gold in them and other metals so they will have tarnished some and will not come as bright as we would like them to. If the decals are silvering you are removing two much shellac over them. Please don't rub hard and use more linseed oil with the alcohol.