Talk:Shellac

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[edit] Confectioner's glaze

Exactly why does "Confectioner's glaze" redirect to zein instead of here? If you Google Confectioner's glaze, nearly all of the results that you will see are shellac, not zein. ( See, for example http://www.chemindustry.com/chemicals/6282556.html ) It seems to me that this redirection could only have been arranged by someone in the zein industry; a possible violation of the NPOV policy. Oskay 06:00, 28 August 2006 (UTC) Oskay 8/27/2006

[edit] Farms?

How did they ever find ENOUGH of the stuff to do what they do with it? Were there little beetle farms?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 64.122.208.51 (talk)

[edit] Dont merge with Lac

While Shellac is derived from lac insects, the types of people searching for info on shellac might not be interested in the bug.

[edit] Shellac

Should not be merged with Lac, although they should crosslink. There is a large woodworking community, in addition to food, etc. that would be adversely effected should they be merged, unless it is assured that a search will return information on both as it currently does.

68.19.131.219 22:16, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Death

"There is a risk that the harvesting process can scoop the insect up along with the secretion, leading to its death." Ummm...who cares? What a risk! KDR (talk) 17:04, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Would you kill a cow just to get a single batch of milk? Would milk be as useful if there was chunks of dead cow in it? Think about it... -- Quiddity (talk) 19:54, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Depends on the milk. Ha. But is a bug as valuable as a cow? The wording just makes it sound more catastrophic than it really is. KDR (talk) 00:02, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
We must respect all life, no matter how small. Wait, my immune system probably killed millions of bacteria today. Oh well. I agree somewhat that the wording is a bit off, "killing the insect" or something would be better than "leading to its death" - which truly does sound tragic. 76.29.12.128 (talk) 00:47, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
The bug is valuable cuz it gives us a product, and the more it doesn't-die the more it can give us. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.72.21.221 (talk) 03:30, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup

There's a lot of useful information in here, but the article isn't the easiest in the world to read. I think it could do with being organised into sections (eg production, uses, and so on) in order to aid readability - I've tagged it with cleanup-reorganize for that reason. Hope it's alright. --saxsux (talk) 15:24, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Etymology

According to the article, "The word is a compound of the words "shell" and "lac" (lacquer)". Because this claim is unsourced, I believe this to be incorrect Original Research. The word "Lac" is from the common name of the bug. I expect (but cannot yet confirm) that the relationship to the word lacquer is either coincidental, or the word shellac predates the word lacquer. I am updating the article (with reference) accordingly. -Verdatum (talk) 18:38, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Historical

It's an old usenet post of mine, the references are robust enough to make it wikiable, but the style's usenet rather than wiki. Have at it, if anyone wants to do the copyediting - I'm a little busy for the next few days Andy Dingley (talk) 02:30, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

There is some excellent stuff there, thank you. I did a cursory copyedit. I felt a bunch needed to be removed for being off-topic. A lot of that off topic material would be better stuited in other articles, such as varnish. There was some random references towards the end, but they weren't actually sourcing any facts so I removed them from the article. However, they look like they may contain excellent information, and if this is the case, I would love to see as many as possible worked into the article. For this reason, I'm pasting the ones I removed here for posterity,
  • Webb, Marianne. Lacquer: Technology and Conservation. ISBN 0750644125.  and Merrifield are pretty much essential.
  • Stalker and Parker (1688). Treatise on Japanning and Varnishing. Tiranti. (which is unreadable)
  • Dossie, Robert. Handmaid of the Arts. 
  • Watin. Watin.  will give you the techniques, although they're post-period and not intended as a historical survey.
  • Some other period handbooks that are easily available as reprints are

I hope that's all of them. -Verdatum (talk) 08:46, 16 May 2008 (UTC)