101 uses for shellac

[Tony Hartwell]

Hi guys check this out, my wife found this in one of her mags, if there was 101 uses for shallac now there is 102. This is straight from the mag.

Did you know.
When you see the number 904 as an additive in food, you can reassure yourself that it's absolutely natural. This additive, called shellac, is a resin extracted from the lac insect - a close relative of the cockroach ! Shellac is often used as a glazing agent in the manufacture of chocolate & confectionery Wait a sec ! why are you throwing away that choccy bar you were eating lol.

Read your next chocolate bar, see if you can find 904, & when the kids drop their bar on your polished table, just rub it in, who knows might look good bye all.
Tony Hartwell.

[ubeaut]

G'day Tony

I think there are closer to 1,001 uses for shellac. Did you know the old 78 records were made from shellac. It is also used as a glaze or polish for fruit (apples oranges etc) and in many pharmaseuticals as well as lots of different lollies.

Carnauba wax is also used extensively in confectionary. Next Easter check out the ingredients on the Easter eggs. You would be surprised just what these 2 are found in. Also used extensively are beeswax and parrafin.

Take all of these, bung in a bit of turps and metho and hey presto, you've got shellawax. No wonder it says food safe on the bottle.

Cheers - Neil

[Iain]

Cadbury's drinking chocolate + metho....cheaper than shellawax and tastes better too!

[John Saxton]

Yeah! and how would that go on some of those bowls made out of the lighter coloured woods!!

[Tony Hartwell]

Well didn’t know shellac was so versatile, but in what form is it when applied on fruit & confectionary & how is it dissolved & if mixed with metho is it still safe to use on items like kids toys.
I use to be in a woodworking group up here on the North Coast of NSW & some of the items I had made for a local jacaranda festival were removed & made not for sale, (they were baby rattles), when I turned up to collect any unsold turnings & any money that I might have made, some of the old guys in the group said they felt that the finish I used on the rattles would poison babies. So I purchased a copy of the Australian standard for Children’s Toys Safety Requirements, then contacted the manufacture of the finish I used, they sent me a signed letter stating that once cured their finish was totally safe & if you wanted to you could eat the dried finish, they also stated that they meet the toxicological requirements of the standard. So once a finish has dried does the drier, thinner or metho or what ever just disappear, maybe the raw product is safe once dried but what about when mixed with a thinner? What’s your opinion.
Cheers
Tony Hartwell.

[Tristan Croll]

The poisonous ingredient in methylated spirits is methanol, the lighter and more dangerous cousin to your friend and mine, ethanol. Being lighter, it is the first component to disappear as the metho evaporates. What is left behind, as far as I know, is a small amount of bone char, which is what they put into metho to make it taste bad. What I'm trying to say is, a non-toxic finish with metho as the solvent should still be non-toxic when dry, but a baby who put's it in its mouth probably won't do it twice!
The same goes pretty much for kerosene, turpentine and thinner, which are simply mixtures of light hydrocarbons. Once dry, they shouldn't leave anything behind at all.

Hope this helps,

Tristan Croll

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Cogito cogito, cogito ergo sum
- I think that I think, therefore I think that I am