Chip, nice job of getting the history on this subject. When I first become a pattern maker the only finish used was shellac by the old guys. They had a 35 gal. barrel full of flake shellac. About half of a gallon jar was filled with the flakes and then covered over with alcohol and desolved into a thick mixture. When we needed shellac we pored this into our personal jar and thinned to our preferences. To speed the finishing of a pattern, we put the first coat of shellac on the wood pattern and lit it with a match. It looked like a bonfire. If I couldn't blow it out I kept a rag near by to smother it. This only took a few seconds and then the grain was standing up and was ready to sand and ready to put on a second coat of shellac. We also burnt the thicken shellac to make a glue. They also made hole filling hard sticks with a complicated formula that included shellac, bees wax, plaster, just to name a few of the ingreedances I remenber and then this was backed in an oven. When used, a flat tool was heated over a torch and the filler was mashed into the hole. These old guys had whole note books full of formulas they developed in the late 30's because much of this stuff couldn't be bought back then. At that time this stuff was secrete and hush hush and not one was allow to see what was going on in this area.

John