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I recently made a pair of boxes out of spalted tiger maple with book matched cocobola tops. The cocobola is shop sawn veneer over masonite glued with tite-bond II ine vacuum press. I pre-finished the tops before assembly with the following method. First I gave the tops a good coat of Watco oil, wiped it totaly dry and let it cure for 5 days. Over that I applied 2 coats of shelac sprayed on( I make my own shelac and it was only a day old), and lightly sanded. The top coat is PPG duralac (1pt Lacquer, 1 1/4pt thiner, fisheye out). I applied 3 coats and rubbed out the finish with rubbing compound and assembled the boxes. As I was getting ready to mask off the tops I noticed a small flaw in one of the boxes, I chipped at it and to my suprise I was able to peel a large sheet of finish right off. I was able to peel almost all the finish off and had to scrape the parts that did manage to adhere, this is not fun on an inset lid on a very expensive box. The suface under the finish was not a consistant tone, almost as though some parts had more oil in them than others. I sanded the surface to even out the tone and re-sprayed the shelac, like an idiot I forgot to drain the separater and got a nice case of blush. when I went to sand it out the finish seemed to be inconsistant, this may be due to the heavy blush but I am not sure. I have sraped the surface back down to bare wood and plan to fe-finish in the near future. The shelac is from a batch that I have used quite a bit on other projects without a problem.
Any ideas would be welcome. Does any one know any incompatibilty with cocobola and shelac? I use shelac as a sealer because it seems to stick to any thing. Does Lacquer have a shelf life? the stuff I used was about 9 months old.
thanks for any advice
Josh