The premium standard button — the benchmark the rest of the bench is measured against. Kusmi #1 comes from the Kusum tree, the most sought-after of the lac varieties: naturally lighter in color, with the longest working life of any sticklac the family refines. It is what most finishers mean when they say "good button lac." What sets #1 apart is the washing. The buttons are double-washed — a second cycle with washing soda, about an extra hour over the standard grade — and sorted to finer granules. Each pass lifts more of the natural lac dye and more of the field impurities, and each pass costs yield in the recovery. The result reads warm honey in alcohol, builds with a few well-laid passes, and rubs out the way the old texts describe. Button lac is the historically authentic form of shellac — the one classical finishing texts were written around, before dewaxed flake became the 20th-century industrial default. It is partially dewaxed in the traditional way, the buttons squeezed warm through cloth bags by hand, which leaves roughly two to three percent of the natural wax in the structure. The buttons are still produced in small cottage operations, weighed and packed one bag at a time. Mixing notes: see the pound cut chart for dry weight per gallon, quart, and pint at the common working cuts. Sourced direct from a fifth-generation refining family in India who has supplied this bench since 1990. Pure, uncut, genuine.
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