I've felt some light at the end of the tunnel this week as the Tru-Oil has really been building up and getting a good gloss. Now that I see it I think I'm going to go for a gloss rather than a satin finish. You can still see the grain really well and I'm just enjoying the process of applying the TO.
Wet Sanding
I've done about 15+ coats with a few sand backs with 600, 800 grit. I did try wet sanding with TO as the lubricant but did not find this working well. Using water has been much better - while protecting the screw holes/edges etc.
I just ordered some micromesh pads for the next sanding steps as nowhere has fine grit sandpaper locally at the moment.
TO Application Streaks
I was getting lots of streaks with the old-tshirt squares I was using, so switched to a lint-free microfibre cloth (for car interiors) from Supercheap Auto. I've got it wrapped around a milk bottle lid to give some structure and a flat surface. It's working OK so far - better than the tshirt. It seems to like heavier coats though. There is still a bit of streaking with thinner coats if I try to work it all the way in, which doesn't seem to work now. Maybe this is just the effect of the coats really building up? The grain bumps are almost completely gone, except for one spot on the body cut out where the grain is very accentuated.
You can see the swirl marks/streaks in the pics:
Neck is looking and feeling nice: