[ATM] first figuring of my first mirror, what did I do wrong?

[Scotto1234 at aol.com (Scotto1234@aol.com)]

I finished polishing out my first mirror (8" F6) and made a first pass at 
figuring and testing. I thought I had a nice even W figuring stroke al la Berry 
and did 100 forward backward strokes MOT. What I found when I tested was that I 
had to move the carriage IN (towards the mirror) on my tester to null each 
progressive zone. Its like I made the outer zones deeper than the inner zones.  
I have a dial indicator on the back of my tester and moving the knife and 
source together, towards the mirror, results in readings that decrease. My 
readings for 5 zones on an 8" mirror with an ROC of 92" were, from zone 1 to 5 
(center to edge) 0.071, 0.051, 0.044, 0.015 & -0.015. I expected the readings to 
become more positive as I adjusted the carriage for the outer zones, i.e., I 
expected that for nulling the outer zones, I would have to move the carriage away 
from the mirror, but this was not the case.  What happened? Am I doing 
something wrong? What do I do next? Do I polish COC to get back to a sphere (and how 
long does this take) and start over using a W with closer spacing at the outer 
edges of the tool? Any advice would be appreciated.  
_________________
Scott R.