Official Luthiers Forum!

Hai, all..
French polish use shellac and denatured alcohol (pure 100%?), Ive difficulted to buy 100% alcohol here, just 90% and small quantity like 100ml and 300ml, here we usually use metanol (metyl alcohol 85%) and have blue color liquid... not clear...
what you ever use with metanol (metyl alcohol 85%)????? tengkiu
herry tze

what about medicinal alcohol 96%? its very cheap and common in pharmacies even in general stores.
at least in my country.

Methyl alcohol inhaled or absorbed through the skin can be really bad for you. Denatured alchohol might have methanol in it. There have been a number of posts on this previously. Alcohol in the drug store could be isopropyl achohol (rubbing alcohol) which might not work so well for French polish, but I am not sure. Search the archives for this topic, or wait a few hours and someone better than I is sure to help you.

I use denatured alcohol from Klean-Strip. I only buy the green label Enviro-friendly stuff, because it has only the minimum required de-naturents added. 95% pure alcohol, readily available and fairly priced.Works great.

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

Everclear.... available at any liquor store.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

I use Behlen Behkol. It works great for french polish and it is pretty safe. (but not for drinking!). The spring 2011 GAL American Lutherie journal had a safety list of most of the commonly avalable DA products. The product PEL (higher is better) Grain alcohol 1000, KLean Strip Green mentioned above 915, Behkol 845. On the worse side Crown denatured alcohol 286, and Klean Strip XLS 400.

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http://www.Harvestmoonguitars.com

Many states have a ban on this stuff being sold in liquor stores. In Pennsylvania it has to be specials ordered. All because of those wild college kids getting out of hand with it.

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Another day, another dollar.

thank's all,... this morning I bought the alcohol 96% from chemical laboratory, and cheap enough... tq...

Not here in the Peoples Republic of Pennsylvania

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

A bottle of vodka (or white lightning) would work, too.
Many print shops here in town use Everclear to clean glass plates and other items on the presses.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Denatured Alcohol, or pure grain Alcohol. Methanol distills out of the mash at a lower temperature than ethanol (drinking alcohol) and is the reason that people sometimes go blind or die from home made hooch. Sometimes the still operator drinks a little too much of his own supply and lets the temperature get a little low, making methanol (death in a bottle) instead of ethanol (liquid courage). Even the store bought stuff is dangerous and unless proper protection is used for simple thinning applications. I would really look around for something safer.

Methanol- Toxic (wood alcohol)
Ethanol- Expensive because of liquor taxes
Isopropyl - Usually too much water in the mix to work as a good solvent
Denatured Alcohol- Ethanol made poisonous to drink, so it escapes the liquor taxes = BEST CHOICE.

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http://www.sixgunguitars.com

I live in UK and 95% alcohol seems unobtainable, but, I just had the luck to to be working in Poland at the moment.

Thanks to this thread I had a look at Vodkas here on the internet and guess what!
Spiritus Vodka (95% alcohol) is quite a tradition here and is freely available here, so I've stocked up for FP when I go home!
Thanks guys!

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

when I mixed alcohol with shellac... can I pour the color or just the pure shellac???