Shellac-ing the cabinet

First job was to start to lacquer the cabinet.

I could have easily bought a pre-lacquered cabinet, but what's the fun in that?

There are all sorts of forum posts about how to approach the lacquering, and I settled on the simple approach of using one coat of clear shellac to seal the edges and corners, and then a number of coats of amber shellac to give that vintage tone.

The clear shellac was easy to buy locally, and I found a reasonably cheap supplier of the amber online and placed an order.

I also read online that you can clean the brushes in denatured alcohol, and it's also useful to dilute the amber so that the color isn't so glaringly orange. So I put some on my shopping list.

The first coat was pretty easy. I took the cabinet apart (removed the speaker baffle, took off the handle and feet) and laid it all out on some newspaper, and proceeded to apply a coat of clear shellac.

It dries pretty quickly, so I was able to turn it all over and reach the parts I hadn't got to about an hour or so after the first pass.