ATM Adventures of the Red Rouge

[Donald Clement <clement@commquest.com>]

Hello Fellow Tns,

Well I finally decided (with the encouragement of the San Diego ATM
group, thanks) to finish parabolizing that old 8" f6 that had been
polished to a sphere. That was some time ago and to give a hint of how
long ago, the pyrex blanks were from WB and have a green cast to them!
The first thing was a new polishing lap. This was provide by one of the
very experienced mentors of the SD ATM group and is a good story for
another thread. Gene are you listening? All I can say is it is the
coolest method of lap making I have ever heard about. Just to give a
hint of how cool, I brought my glass tool to ATM place and the lap that
had been cast elsewhere was applied, sort of like retreading a tire. Hot
and cold pressing and I off and polishing. 

I had thought to finish figuring with the black rouge but that was not
to be. Turns out WB doesn't sell black rouge any more either.  I did had
an unopened bag of WB Optical Red Rouge though. So I started with that. 
Red rouge is not for the faint hearted! Nasty stuff. It was everything
that others had said it was except so far no sleeks. The mirror surface
looks very smooth, no TDE, and the rouge appears to be polishing very
slow. The one thing that I surprised about though was the loud
fingernails on blackboard sound when polishing. I was told that this was
the sound of good lap contact. Must have been the case as the surface
looked quite smooth. I think that in addition to some sort of clothing
protection, earplugs are needed also :-)

Donald Clement
San Diego/ Running Springs