Wax On, Wax Off

Putting the wax on was incredibly easy. I scooped a bit into some cheesecloth:



and balled it up. I rubbed it on in nice little circles.



Then it dried kind of cloudy.



I used a rag and rubbed the hell out of it to get back the shine. It took a good twenty minutes of strong buffing to get it presentable.

To be honest, I was not happy with the results. At all. The steel wool raised imperfections in the shellac that didn't buff out with the wax, as well as streak marks along the grain. But I figured I was too close to the project, so I threw a table cloth over it and decided to check it later to see if it was really that bad.

So this morning I pulled up a chair and enjoyed breakfast on a table for the first time in two weeks. After, I peeked under the tablecloth and saw this:




You might not be able to make it out, but that's about half a dozen rings from my mug pressed into the finish. I was also incredibly pleased about this:



Yup, those are paw prints from the fattest cat around, Bacchus. (Really, I'm only guessing it was him because he's the meanest of our cat herd.) Not just smudges, but actual prints embedded in the finish. Anywhere pressure was applied, it left a mark- from paws, elbows, plates, and especially from my forehead where I smashed it in frustration.

Not happy. If anyone out there in Interweb Land knows why this happened, please tell me! I'm heading to a specialty shop this weekend for some expert advice on how to salvage all my work, but if you have any ideas, please let me know.

This sucks.