# Shellac and Methylated Spirit query.



## goldeneyedmonkey (3 Aug 2011)

Ay up folks,

Just wondering, I've never used Shellac before, but it's pretty straightforward by all accounts. But, all the methylated spirit that I can find has the usual purple dye in it, is this going to affect the colour of the Shellac? (I'm just going to get de-waxed Blonde). If you can buy the transparent stuff where do you get it from?

Cheers all. _Dan.


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## bucephalus (3 Aug 2011)

I was worried about the same thing but read somewhere that it wasn't a problem (I believe Americans seem to use 'denatured alcohol' but I've never seen it in the UK - I think its the same but clear? Perhaps someone more knowledgable can confirm?) - and when I used it (admittedly with some garnet shellac rather than blonde) it worked fine.


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## tomatwark (3 Aug 2011)

Try this company, I get all my finishes from them http://www.rydenor.co.uk/

On their web site it seems to be called shellac thinners.

Give them a ring and ask about it as they are always really helpful.

Tom


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## Waka (3 Aug 2011)

I've used MS in the past with shallac flakes, no problem at all.


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## marcros (3 Aug 2011)

surgical spirit is methylated spirit without the dye I think.


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## jimi43 (3 Aug 2011)

It has no affect whatever.

Jim


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## goldeneyedmonkey (3 Aug 2011)

Thanks all, I've got the answer I was looking for. Also, just seen that 'Fiddes' sell it with the dye in and they state the use as a dillutant (think I may have made that word up) for French Polishing, i.e shellac. 

Cheers me dears. _Dan


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## Jacob (3 Aug 2011)

marcros":3vo2j4hh said:


> surgical spirit is methylated spirit without the dye I think.


I think it has an added nasty flavour same as meths. Pity!
If you want it pure you could approach the illegal vodka distillers in East Anglia, if there are any left.


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## Harbo (3 Aug 2011)

SS is Ethyl Alcohol with added nasties.

Rod


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## Alf (3 Aug 2011)

The dye in regular meths is likely only ever to be an issue on the very palest woods; if you're worried, then there are various clear thinners sold. Chestnut has "Spirit Thinners" for instance, which works fine.


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## bosshogg (3 Aug 2011)

Even back in the sixties, meths was purple/blue, to inhibit alcoholic abuse, but the colour of the shellac was unaffected. And your right it is very easy to use applied in the usual way, only when 'french polishing' does it become difficult and that's mostly down to experience...bosshogg  


> You cant help a man who doesn't tell you what he wants (hammer)


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## MIGNAL (3 Aug 2011)

MS is Ethanol, Methanol and Pyradine. Wear gloves if you are French Polishing. Alternately buy the Fiddes finishing Spirit, supposedly contains Ethanol without the other nasty stuff.
BTW I've recently bought 3 bottles of MS that are clear. I guess they just plain forgot to add the dye, unless it's very old stock and the dye is fugitive.


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## jimi43 (3 Aug 2011)

According to WIKI....Methylated Spirit in this country is defined thus:



> Completely denatured alcohol must be made in accordance with the following formulation: with every 90 parts by volume of alcohol mix 9.5 parts by volume of wood naphtha or a substitute for wood naphtha and 0.5 parts by volume of crude pyridine, and to the resulting mixture add mineral naphtha (petroleum oil) in the proportion of 3.75 litres to every 1000 litres of the mixture and synthetic organic dyestuff (methyl violet) in the proportion of 1.5 grams to every 1000 litres of the mixture.



I have some meths which was in the light in a shed at the back of a shelf for years and it is now almost clear. You'd be hard pressed to see any difference in shellac to that of a clear version....

Jim


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## twothumbs (3 Aug 2011)

The colour bleaches out in time due to exposure to light. Purple was the only sort you could get and is not problem as per Bosshog and jimi43. You had to sign for it at the chemists at one time ie. for paint thinning or primus stove. Good luck.


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## Mooeee (4 Aug 2011)

Hi
You can buy clear MS but you need a licence and state that you won't use over a certain amount per year, its about how you store it, I think you get the licence from the council but I may be wrong, I will find out again as I was looking at getting some clear in the past.

Nobody will sell you clear MS unless you can show you have the licence to purchase it.


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## Eric The Viking (4 Aug 2011)

You could, of course, just use high proof vodka.

Seriously, I've had a couple of bottles of meths recently from Toolstation, that have gone clear over time in sunlight. Whatever they're using to colour it, it isn't Methyl Violet!

[Later] Wikipedia is a bit ambiguous on the matter of degradation by sunlight "Light alone does not rapidly degrade methyl violet..." but says it us accelerated by certain semiconductors - Titanium or [edit]Zirconium[/] oxides. 

I guess there might be something in the PET bottle's liner...


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## Benchwayze (4 Aug 2011)

I believe that Meths is dyed purple to make it less 'attractive' to alcoholics. (Or at least to make most people aware that it isn't really drinkable).) 
The white stuff is decidedly more attractive, especially when mixed with orange juice. You can ask me how I know that, but I probably won't tell you. [-( 

I would add that never having been an alcoholic, doesn't preclude me from knowing this little snippet! (I might be wrong, but I believe Meths is required to be 'The Colour Purple' for legal reasons too. :-k 

(No I don't think it will noticeably affect the colour of a shellac finish.

HTH 
John


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## studders (4 Aug 2011)

The question is... Meths.. Ice and Slice or as is?


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## bosshogg (4 Aug 2011)

Hic _____nope duno either ______Hic! :lol:


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## Benchwayze (4 Aug 2011)

Just be careful driving, after you have been using meths for any considerable period,. There's more than one way of ingesting alcohol! 8) 

John


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## Peter Sefton (5 Aug 2011)

I tend to use purple meths for mop cleaning and washing off old polish but do still use industrial methylated spirits (IMS) for diluting white or pale polish. The last IMS I bought was from Quick Sharp in Buckingham 01280 822062 sorry no web site.

The following info is from Rest Express 01285 831668 who are very good for all finishing products but no IMS on the web site.

Methylated Spirit http://www.restexpress.co.uk/acatalog/F ... irits.html

Methylated Spirits is a virgin alcohol prepared for industrial use. Suitable for use as a solvent for knotting, spirit based varnishes, some spirit based paints and French polish. 
Methylated Spirits can also be used as a cleaner for paintwork, glassware and for wiping resinous matter from knots prior to knotting. 
Methylated Spirits is also commonly used as a fuel for heating/cooking. 
Methylated Spirits is commonly known as Denatured Alcohol, Ethanol (Ethyl Alcohol) is mixed with a small quantity of Methanol to make it unfit for consumption, and dyed purple.


Fiddes Finishing Spirit http://www.restexpress.co.uk/acatalog/F ... pirit.html

Fiddes Finishing spirit is 90% alcohol with added shellac used for making polishes and for spiriting out process. This product is often favoured by French Polishers over methylated spirits, as meth’s can sometimes leave a residue smear. 

As I understand it the purple is to stop the guys drinking it in the park. Life is so unfair.

I usually sign off with cheers Peter


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## Eric The Viking (5 Aug 2011)

They put pyridine in meths, besides the violet dye, to make it taste better, er, bitter. 

Methanol (the main 'denaturing' agent) will cause blindness, apparently, if as little as 10ccs is ingested in one go, slices of lemon notwithstanding.

I'm gonna stick to marker pens, I think, or Evo-Stick, or both, if I use the Evo-Stick first. ;-)


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## jimi43 (5 Aug 2011)

If we're comparing vapours...I would favour nitrocellulose any day of the week....

Don't ya just love the smell of nitro in the morning...! :mrgreen: 

(Sorry Robert!)  

Jim


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## Benchwayze (5 Aug 2011)

Hmmmm! 

In the 50s, I was serving in a destroyer. Because I could paint signs reasonably well, I was given the job of 'Putty' (Ship's painter). As such I was responsible for the issuing of paint and so on. 

I issued one guy a pint of white meths, legitimately, but when he came back a day or so later for another 'issue', I found out that instead of using it only to clean certain machinery, he had consumed most of it with orange cordial. (He was on 'punishment detail', so temporarily had no access to alcohol.) A sad case of alcoholism, that was another nail in the coffin of the daily issue of rum. 

I often wonder what eventually happened to him.  

John


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## jimi43 (5 Aug 2011)

Benchwayze":3h1it0mx said:


> I often wonder what eventually happened to him.
> 
> John



He's probably just a spirit now.... :mrgreen: 

Or retired from the Polish navy? 

Ok...ok...I'm going...coat on as we speak.... :mrgreen: 

Jim


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## Benchwayze (5 Aug 2011)

Don't forget your hat Jim and close the door softly behind you!!! :lol: 

John :mrgreen:


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## Woodski (6 May 2013)

This is a long time bolting the stable door after the thread has bolted, but has anyone ever tried bioethanol to dissolve lac in? Local garden centres seem to have the stuff in small to medium sized bottles and I was thinking this was worth a punt, what with it being clear as day.

FWIW I've used ordinary violet meths and am happy with the result, not so much with the smell but feel if you're into friction polishes that the linseed/tung/liquid paraffin or even baby oil sweetens up the smell enough.


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## Eric The Viking (6 May 2013)

I have some (quite a lot of) meths from Toolstation: It's lost its colour, I think because of UV, and is now pretty much clear.

I assume it wasn't originally coloured with methyl violet.


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## mind_the_goat (7 May 2013)

Try your local dispensing chemist


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## Eric The Viking (7 May 2013)

@Woodski:

What is "bioethanol"?

Unless the rules have changed, methanol was added to ethanol ("denatured") so as to make it undrinkable, because of the excise duty on ethanol (the alcohol in beer, wine and spirits, which is relatively safe). Methanol is poison and causes blindness in small quantities, but chosen because the two are hard to separate by distillation (and it's bloomin' dangerous to try!). The methyl violet was to make this obvious (and I think a mercaptan was added to give it the smell). It's donks since I did this at school, and my memory is shot with holes anyway.

So unless full duty is paid (similar to vodka!), something must be added to bioethanol or it has an exemption (in which case the Christmas punch will be a good home for it!).

So does anyone know, and is it cheap enough to be worth it?


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## Bluekingfisher (9 May 2013)

The reason for the purple dye (which has an acrid taste) is to prevent it from being further distilled into "drinking" alcohol. If you were to store it in an oak cask (without the dye) for 10 years it would be called whisky.

It cannot be bought here, as it can be the US in its raw state without a licence ,underlining what it is to be used for.............perish the thought anyone would turn it into moonshine.


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## Cheshirechappie (9 May 2013)

mind_the_goat":3pwq99n5 said:


> Try your local dispensing chemist




I did just that a few years ago. Asked for about half a litre of ethanol or undyed meths. Offered to sign the Poisons Register an' all. The look of utter disgust the chemist gave me spoke volumes about what he thought I wanted it for, and no amount of explaining french polishing with blond de-waxed shellac changed his mind.

In the end, I used thinned polyurethane varnish, which did a tolerable job. I've always taken my business to other dispensing chemists since then, too.

Might try Finishing Spirit next time I've got a job that needs shellac, though. Thanks to whoever mentioned Finishing Spirit - new one on me!

(P.S. - It was Peter Sefton who mentioned it - thanks, Peter!)


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## Woodski (13 May 2013)

Eric The Viking":19cewcsh said:


> @Woodski:
> 
> What is "bioethanol"?
> 
> ...



<snip>
What is bioethanol fuel?

Bioethanol fuel is quite simply strong alcohol made from European agriculture by the sugar fermentation process. The main sources of sugar required to produce ethanol come from fuel or energy crops, these crops are grown specifically for their energy content. Ethanol can be produced from biomass by the hydrolysis and sugar fermentation processes, this breaks down the cellulostic part of the biomass into sugar solutions that can then be fermented into bioethanol. This Ethanol is then mixed with bittering agents so it cannot be consumed by humans and is then ready for retail sales. 
</snip>

It sounds gert lush with ice and a slice :mrgreen: - no seriously, being colourless it looks worth a try...

Apparently a standard and 'odourless' versions are available - the odourless one has the 'best denaturants' whatever those might be - tonsil varnish probably :lol: 

Woodski


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## Eric The Viking (13 May 2013)

Thanks, Woodski.

Before using it with shellac, I think I'd want to know what the 'bittering agent' is (sounds like Bloefeld to me!). It might be worse than methyl violet.

Meanwhile, I optimistically put the garden umbrella up last week end. It's thirsty work...



E.


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## MIGNAL (13 May 2013)

The Fiddes finishing Spirit is pure ethanol with a touch of Shellac added. It's a touch slower in dissolving Shellac than regular Meths - ethanol/methanol mix. Slowest is Isopropyl alcohol. None of this seems to matter much in actual use. The different flash off times are too close.


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## pointer2null (8 Jan 2017)

To resurrect an old thread (probably still relevent and still asked) - another new equivelent seems to be the bio-ethanol used for these trendy fires. 

>96% ethanol,
+ usual denaturants (poison and bitter taste) 
but no dye.

http://www.diy.com/departments/la-hacie ... 224_BQ.prd

Also cheaper than meths at around £3/litre


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## Mr T (8 Jan 2017)

I buy it from my finish suppliers Rydenor at Thirsk, they call it shellac thinners. http://rydenor.co.uk/shellac-thinners?search=shellac thinners


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## Andrewf (9 Jan 2017)

Just an interesting fact, methanol is highly poisonous, however the cure for methanol poisoning is actually Vodka. Apparently the ethanol in the vodka combines with the methanol and neutralises it. Have used it a couple of times for suspected methanol poisoning. 
How do i know this you may ask. Well for years i transported pure methanol and ethanolin huge quantities, and a bottle of vodka was kept in my poison chest, along with other antidotes to other dangerous chemicals.


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