This top was torrified so it was already a bit darker but you can definitely get an even color on spruce using the French Polish technique. I used The Kusmi #2 on this one and the #1 is much lighter. But yes not a light light blonde though for sure. Bare in mind that button lac has wax in it. You don't necessarily have to dewax it. They certainly never did when they finished gym floors with the stuff. I can't claim that it's any harder then dewaxed flakes. I know they say hat it is but I've never read anything definitive about it.
If you do want to dewax it what I found works best is to chop the buttons up by putting them in a zip lock and pounding them with a hammer then put those smaller pieces in a coffee grinder and make powder. Then do the teabag method. Use a coffee filter and tie up the ground shellac into a teabag. Tye off the bag with a string. Get a glass salsa jar or something like that and poke a hole dead center top. feed the string through that. Fill the jar with alcohol and then seal it while holding the string then lower the tea bag till it just barely touches the alcohol. Within about 2 minutes you will see a swirl start to develop and as the shellac dissolves it sinks to the bottom creating a current which furthers the dissolving action. It's pretty cool actually.
It should be ready to use the next day and you might still need to let some wax settle to the bottom but the filters do a good job. DON'T squeeze out the filter.
Al;so it's always a good idea to get those little screen filters and further sift out any potential particles.
