Shellac Question

[Jerry Bruette]

Is it possible to take a one pound cut that I mixed and dry it in a container to return it back to flake form for long term storage?

Or am I thinking stupid?

[Prashun Patel]

It will require more effort or energy to distill it than to just buy more flake fresh.

[Jerry Bruette]

Couldn't I just pour it in a large shallow container and let the DNA evaporate off?

[glenn bradley]

Shellac is an organic product. It has a shelf life whether in liquid form or not. Jeff Jewitt speaks about user mixed shellac having about a 6 month shelf life. He goes on to say that flakes less than 6 months old provide the best performance characteristics. Zinserr's method of liquefying shellac gives it a shelf life of up to three years.

None of this is extremely conclusive but, shellac will return to solution when reintroduced to alcohol. The length of time this takes and the quality of the resulting liquid shellac you will get seems questionable. Just to add to the confusion, I use Zinserr's that has been around "too long" to seal jigs, tool handles and so forth that will either not matter or will get re-sealed again as time goes by.

[Rich Engelhardt]

Or am I thinking stupid

Since I've head of people grinding up old 78 RPM records and adding DNA to the powder and making a shellac based black "enamel", then no - nothing stupid about it.
Unusual maybe.

I'm sure there's some kind of either cost or labor drawback to the idea though.