Drawer Finish

I put the first coat of finish on the drawers yesterday. I’m using my regular oil finish on the fronts to match everything else, but I went with a coat of shellac on the sides and back. While I love my oil finish on darker woods, it gives lighter woods kind of a sickly yellow color. So on drawers I like to do a coat of “clear” shellac, which still has a very minor yellow/beige tint, but hardly noticeable. The oil will also give off a smell for a quite a while afterwords, whereas the shellac is fairly odorless after a couple of days. I don’t mind the smell of the oil, but when you use it on a drawer then everything inside starts to smell like it too, which can be…undesirable.

Here’s two drawers, the shellac’ed one on the bottom one and an unfinished one on top. The shellac just sort of darkens the natural color of the wood:

The single coat of shellac leaves a rough surface so I went all around with 320 grit sandpaper and now it’s nice and smooth again. I haven’t decided if I want to do a second coat of shellac on the sides yet: they don’t really need to be protected from anything, but it could be nice to smooth out the color a little after the sanding. I’ll do the standard 3 coats of oil on the fronts. Two more to go!