Nathan, I’m a middle of the road finisher at best. I have used shellac a ton on small projects and find it easy to use, gives good results, and easy to fix if you mess up a coat.. I know this helps you exactly zero but this might......FWW has a YouTube video “Can the can(Ned) shellac” by Mike Pekovich. This is the application method I use. I took a class from him years ago and have been using it ever since. But that is when I first started using shellac, so I have never used any other method. The video is about mixing your own flakes but he shows his application method in the video. I’m not sure if Pekovich talks about it in the video or not, but he cuts the canned stuff 50/50 with DNA when he uses that. Hope it helps.