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Sorry to be so long...
Whatever wax does to the film strength, it makes the pad stick when you French polish. Seedlac is the easiest stuff to de-wax, probably because it's less refined. The refining processes seem to break the wax into smaller bits, that are harder to filter out. I wrap the amount of seedlac I want to dissolve up in a bit of T-shirt material and suspend the 'teabag' near the top of a jar of alcohol. The solution settles out, pushing the purer alkohol to the top, where it dissolves the shellac. It doesn't take very long to get a strong enough solution to use, and I pour that off into a 'working' bottle and add more alcohol. I usually go through about three changes of alcohol before the stuff looks too puny, and then I throw out the teabag, with all the wax and trash in it, and start over. The last bit of solution might get a little cloudy, but not much wax gets through unless you squeeze the bag.
For a pumice fill, I start with a thin 'spit coat' of shellac, using a nice, fresh, coarse linen cover on the pad. Once there's enough shellac on the surface to make a little bit of gloss it's time to let it dry and start to fill.
The thing is that it's the dry shellac on the surface that 'pulls' the stuff off the pad and builds up the coat. The less shellac on the surface, the harder it is to build. The latewood lines in the top don't allow the shellac to penetrate, while on the earlywood it just soaks in. The shellac thus tends to build faster on the latewood than the earlywood, and once it starts to build up, it tends to build faster, which causes it to build even more. You can end up with the earlywood practically bare wile the latewood has ribbons of shellac on the surface. So the intent in filling is just to 'even up' the earlywood: you're not really 'filling pores' as you are on the back.
Take the pad and put some alcohol on it. Then sprinkle a little bit of FFFF pumice on the working face, and allow it to soak up alcohol until it's wet, which is called 'clearing'. Think of sugar on cerial. Rub that into the top with a circular motion. This dissolves the dry spit coat, grinds up some of the wood, and also works the pumice down to a finer powder, making a thin mud that gets packed into the surface. The idea is to have _just enough_ of this mud to fill whatever you have to, and on the top that won't be much. The amount of mud you make will depend on how much shellac you put on: more shellac, more mud. If the mud starts to build on the surface it will be cloudy, and it's hard to remove. The best way I've found is to wipe it off with some alcohol on a rag, but that usually leaves you too dry, and you have to start over once the alcohol has completely evaporated in a half hour or so. If there's not enough shellac the surface will feel 'gritty' or 'chalky' and won't build up a gloss. You can add a very small amount of shellac to the pad when it's like that, but not much. The ideal is to build up a more or less uniform gloss on the surface without actually building a film of any thickness, so we're not talking about much stuff here.
Once you've got a decent gloss on the top, with not too much difference between the early and late wood, you can replace your pad cover (which probably has a hole in it by now anyway) and start to lay on shellac. I usually just lay it down in straight lines along the grain, but whatever works for you is right.
French polish is a really 'Zen' finish, in that it's all about being in the moment and learning what it feels and looks like. Sometimes it can take a while to get it going, even though it sounds simple. It's like riding a bike: you fall off and fall off and fall off, and then, once, it works, and after that you hardly ever fall off. Except, with French polish you don't skin your knees. Good thing; that alcohol would sting!
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