Varnishes are made by cooking an oil with a resin. The result is a new product called varnish. Copal is one such resin. In the renaissance, luthiers used a variety of things, including amber. Today most varnishes are made from urethane, phenolic, or alkyd resins.

The only people that I know use Copal varnish are artists and art restorers to seal paintings. If you do a Google search you will find some places to buy it in small quantities.

It will be easier---and probably even less expensive to use shellac. There are several different colors of shellac---if you buy flakes and mix your own---since the shelf life of regular mixed shellac is short. Do a Google on shellac and you will find more info than you need.

If you buy too much, you can always find a woodworker to buy the excess.

well i went to Karl's paints. i dunno if it's a chain or not but they actually had quite a few pieces of wood, mostly doug fir, varnished with different kinds of Benjamin Moore products. i saw that with one to three coats, i could get the grain a nice flourescent orange with yellow pulp. i bought three half-pints at about $3 a pop. they are: Stays Clear acrylic poly high gloss 422 00; One Hour Clear Finish Low Lustre 421 00; and Polyurathane Finish High Gloss 428 00. i will try them on some new wood i have. maybe sand the back of the old growth and also a scratch or three on my wood walls. thanks for your help y'all :)

Help me out. What do you mean by yellow pulp?

the wood that's not the grain. might be using the wrong word but the majority of the wood

"early wood" vs. "late wood"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood