so let's take a moment to talk about how do you know if you're shellac flakes or the shellac itself any good wait people wonder a lot of times you go online and you see some stellar he'll say well it's good for a few years then get rid of it it's not necessarily true long because there's a few ways that you can tell pretty definitively whether the flakes are good I've got shellac flakes there's got to be is just evil there's close but there's three or four signs have been up in number one that you mix your shellac in your jar it doesn't completely miss you go 24 hours you're shaking your jar periodically maybe justice during six hours and there's just some flakes that I'm doing it maybe nineteen ninety-five percent of those legs have dissolved with the rest of you that's that's a sign that the flicks or you know beginning to turn that shall actually still be usable and I still will use that shellac for other things around the shop and shellac in your tool we handle things like that but I wouldn't use it in french polishing if it's if it's starting to not dissolve another thing that you'll see is he you'll put the Schleck on a work piece and it just doesn't appear to be drawing the way chadron we got it shall I Drive quickly as you'll see in in my process by the time I'm working on the guitar I get from one end to the other end of the guitar the beginning and destroy if you're finding that the shellac that is not appear to be properly drying that's a good sign that the flakes have gotten old or even the licks that you've made is gone though but right now I'm talking about the flames the third thing that happens man has happened to me once is that you will find that you mix up some chillaxin some of your old flags and at the bottom of the jar there is this hottie like nasty substance it's not relax it seems like a funny that's thick putty again not a good sign this is Chaka without using french polishing but you might decide to use it for general shop purposes so those are three clear signs of shellac flakes are beginning to go bad but if the shellac dissolves properly that this shellac dries properly and functions and as normal those flakes are good and then I know people who have had shellac flakes for a long time now mostly what I'm talking about now are d west shellac flakes flakes shellac would wax content is kept in a cool dry place and we're assuming that you're keeping the material properly in a cool dry place last content flakes can last indefinitely they can they can last a very very long time but typically d wax shellac is where we're a little bit more is he same thing would button lack a button lack with a wax content can last decades although it can to ultimately fail but you're going to tend to see failures more often on the D wax relax side of things now what about shellac that you mixed typically I just don't keep it that long six months is a good rule of thumb for how long mixed shellac will last I know people who will put their schleck in the refrigerator or even the freezer I don't pretend to worry about moisture which is sort of the killer of shellac but they say six months is good usually I just make up enough that i'm going to use for my guitar project and there's rarely very much more and after six months or so i'll get rid of it but again you'll notice the same issues if the shellac is going bad it will not dry very well on the work piece you may even see that congealed putty-like stuff of the bum so that hopefully gives you a little bit of confidence to know that just because you're sure lacus you know been in your shop for five or six or even 10 years or more doesn't mean it's bad and you have to throw it out there are ways to determine