One comment that many mght be interested in hearing - Shellac is not nearly so perishable as a film finish as WW texts would have you believe. I did a few tests on its durability for a kitchen island top I built for a friend. Specifically, I coated some cherry samples with 6 coats of hand-brushed shellac dissolved from flakes, then poured mountain dew, beer, wine and water on the samples, and left them overnight. The next morning, I wiped off the samples with a dampened cloth and looked for damage. There was none - there was no distinguishable water mark, and the surface had an even sheen on all of the samples. Thinking that the liquid might've evaporated fairly quickly, I performed the same test except I used paper towels soaked with the liquids, and left them in contact with the shellac surface overnight in a plastic bag to prevent evaporation. Same result - no damage.
Based on these tests, I finished the cherry kitchen island top with about 10 coats of shellac (that were sanded and smoothed about every 3 coats). That was about a year and a half ago. Despite daily use, and in a family with 3 children, there has been virtually no detectable damage to the finish on the top. The only exception was a ring left by an extremely hot coffe cup placed directly on the surface - and that damage was incredibly easy to sand out and repair.
I suspect that one of the keys to getting this kind of performance out of shellac is to carefully evaluate the condition of the flakes when you get them - I've had flakes that were sticky and much of it refused to dissolve in denatured alcohol. That material just didn't cut it as a finish - it would never get hard, even after a few days. So I pitched it in the trash and ordered a pound from Joel at Tools for Working Wood. He'd determined that high storage humidities and generally bad handling had affected most stocks of shellac flakes during that year, and had worked with his supplier to obtain some much more carefully treated material.
That material yielded the surfaces that I experimented with, and ultimately used to finish the kitchen island top.