# Cleaning brushes and Mylands Lacacote sanding sealer



## JohnPW (27 May 2017)

Has anyone used Mylands Lacacote sanding sealer before?

The product sheet says use meths to clean up but I get white lumps on the brush and the hair goes stiff. I also get white bits on the wood especially in the pores.


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## ED65 (30 May 2017)

Since you haven't gotten any other feedback I thought I'd give my 2p. The Lacacote is a stronger mix of shellac so you can expect that it'll be more difficult to rinse from a brush. But because it's shellac it doesn't matter if it dries stiff if you only use the brush for shellac, you can just soften it next time you go to use it by dunking in meths, then use as normal. 

If you do want to get the brush completely clean though you'll have to use a much larger volume of meths as well as possibly needing a two-bath or three-bath rinsing setup. Using a commercial brush cleaner for the last step might work more effectively than pure meths, I've had good luck with this for brushes I use for a range of finishes and not just shellac.

About the white lumps, you should probably try contacting Mylands to check on this but I think it's wax that has settled out of solution and solidified, either the wax in the original shellac or the stearates they've added to it to improve sanding. This may be a sign the stuff is a little out of date because I used to get the same in a very old bottle of Flag sanding sealer.


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## JohnPW (9 Jul 2017)

Thanks for the excellent reply!

That's really good advice re the meths getting loaded up with shellac, therefore needing more or fresh meths for a proper cleaning of the brush. And you were right about the lumps, the bottle was a bit old and almost all used up, I guess possibly what was left in the bottle had more amounts of solids than normal.

I tried a new bottle and the brush cleaned up OK without white lumps!


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