Thread: Will old shellac dust leave a glaze if wiped off with metho?

Having previously wasted a whole day sanding old shellac off just one chair I decided to take a quicker approach. As the finish is old, dark and quite powdery I thought a card scraper would be more practical. Instead of a day, I achieved better results within a matter of mere hours. (Or so I thought...)

When I scraped I removed all colour and any cloudiness underneath until I was at what I believed to be bare timber. I didn't want to scrape/sand further, not even to remove old dings or scratches as it's a fairly thin veneer in places and the dings are part of these chairs' character.

After brushing off the dust I gave the timber a quick wipe-down with a metho dampened cloth. That's where I parked up yesterday, intending to go out today and give it a light sand before moving on to minor repairs and sealing with dilute shellac today. (Final coats of shellac will go on later when all chairs are prepped.)

However, this morning when I went out to the shed I noticed that the chair has a glazed look to it. Almost as though I'd already patchily brushed on the first coat of dilute shellac as a sanding sealer. The glaze is the same colour as when I wetted the timber with metho... except that it hasn't dried back to matte.

I was fairly careful when I brushed it down to remove all the dust and little colour showed on the rag after wiping down, but would this glaze be caused by any remaining shellac dust/grain filler being dissolved by the metho?

If so, should I go out of my way to remove all of it when I do the light sand (which'd make it less of the "light" and more of the "sand" than I'd intended) or should I be able to generally ignore it and go ahead with a dilute coat of shellac as intended?