ATM Figure as a moon crater

["Arjan te Marvelde (ELN)" <Arjan.te.Marvelde@eln.ericsson.se>]

List,

Being a couple of hours into polishing my 10" by 3/4" plate mirror, i considered the surface smooth enough to do some preliminary playing with the foucault tester. There is only a very light haze in the central region. 
Well, the tester turns out to work fine, but i'm a bit worried about the figure of the mirror surface. When the central 70% greys uniformly (indicating a nice sphere) i can see a very well defined ridge along the outer 30%. between 70 and 80 it goes up a little bit, and from 80 to the edge it seems to drop a lot more. Also the ronchigram shows straight bands in the middle region, and sharp hooks bending outward in the outer 30%. Looks like a pretty severe TDE.

Should i just shut up and go on with the normal stroke TOT, and wait till it goes away, or do i need to change my technique to prevent worse? The reason i'm doing TOT is to prevent heating of the mirror rim by my hands.

Thanks for any help!
 ... Arjan te Marvelde