Original sentence: Basically: when shellac is new, the surface is smooth and flat and shiny.Buildings finished with shellac were built before the days of air-conditioning, and the summer heat year after year caused the shellac to alligator over time.But over time, it alligators, leading to it being dull and bumpy and sort of pitted.Historically, if woodwork was wanted a dark color (i.New shellac, if it will alligator on its own at all, will take several decades.Old shellac does something called alligatoring.Shellac alligators in response to heat.The solution is to use a heat gun.There is a technique for making shellac look old.There is only one historically accurate shellac: waxy orange shellac.This is what was sold at hardware and paint stores for decades before varnish and lacquer displaced it.This will cause it to match old shellac perfectly.To match it in an old building for the sake of aesthetics or historical accuracy, the only effective way to do it is the way it happened naturally: heat.Unlike today, where ones puts on a coat of stain, then a coat of polyurethane - back then, it was a few coats of tinted shellac over the bare wood, that's all.Using a 1000-watt heat gun over the dried new shellac will cause it to bubble up and alligator, much like caramelizing the top of a crème brulée.Using an alcohol-soluble dye, such as TransTint dye, added to some waxy orange shellac, perfectly matches the original woodwork in historic buildings when applied in a few coats of the correct thickness.While guitar- or furniture-makers who are into shellac have a blast with the other colours, only waxy orange shellac is appropriate for historically accurate restorations.mahogany or ebony, the two most common), one "mahagoanised" or "ebonised" it by using waxy orange shellac tinted with dye