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Notes -
It's annoyingly inconsistent I think. I've had great results with really working hard as you described. And then sometimes for no seeming discernable reason the same thing seems to take some of the finish off. I'm sure there was something I did wrong, as I am not an expert by any means.
Your work looks really, really good, so I think you can definitely be proud of that!
I know when I did mine and polished to a glass finish, my steel wool pad was already pretty gummed up and dull from the wax. I have raw dogged with steel wool and gone through the shellac in a flash. I was actually just reviewing a Paul Sellers video where he's doing a shellac finish with wax, and he just barely touches it with a dry 0000 steel wool pad, and then comes after with the wax. Never hurts to keep trying different techniques though.
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