A couple of years ago, my wife and I took a week long finishing class at Marc Adams School of Woodworking. Our instructor, Dave Smith, told us an entertaining shaggy-dog story about the wonders of shellac as a finish. It went something like this:
A number of years ago, Dave got called out by a friend of his, Mitch Kahonek, to consult on finishing some rather large turnings. As Dave told us, a Virgil Leih had gotten into turning after seeing a picture in a magazine article showcasing the work of another turner in Australia. In the pictures accompanying the article the vases he had turned were taller than he was. Virgil was so struck by the turnings that he emailed the Australian to find out how he’d done it. Alas, no answer, so Virgil decided to figure it out on his own. He searched for the largest lathe made and found it somewhere back east, bought it, and brought it back to Minnesota where he taught himself how to turn tree trunks(!). After some limited success, the next problem was how to dry the green wood turnings in a way that they wouldn’t split apart as they dried. According to Dave, Virgil’s solution was to build a giant microwave, and he began experimenting with various ways of replacing the moisture in the wood with resin as the microwave slowly cooked it off. But how to finish the very tall vases once cured? Dave and Mitch recommended shellac, and that’s what Virgil Leih uses to finish his amazing, gigantic turned vases. You can check them out here: https://www.virgiltreeart.com/large-turned-vases
But that wasn’t the end of the shaggy-dog story. The Australian finally got back to Virgil after seeing one of his big vases online. It turns out that the Australian hadn’t been turning large vases at all and had no idea what Virgil was talking about. In the pictures accompanying the magazine article, the Australian was just standing several yards behind his vases and the foreshortening affect made the vases look much larger than they actually were…
As for the Marc Adams finishing class, I could not recommend it highly enough. I’ve been to woodworking classes all over the country, but I had always pretty much hated finishing. Well, I don’t anymore. I learned more in that 5-day course than in any other class I’ve taken. It was simply fantastic. In fact ALL of the classes at Marc Adams are really quite good.