The Mirror 2012-2013

As this was over 15 years ago, there is not a lot of documentation on making the mirror- nowhere near the detail for the log I kept for the 17.5". But I do have pictures and videos of polishing the mirror at home. The videos are below, followed by pictures. 

I ground out the mirror at Steve's shop using 80 to 9 micron, then polished out the mirror at home. My wife helped polish it too, when I got tired and worn out. This took hours, hours, upon hours to get it fully polished out, and even then, there are just a few pits remaining. It won't hurt the image. You can see in the last image, that I was between a sphere and a parabloid after polishing. Nice! 

After polishing out, Steve guided me in figuring the mirror. This took, if I recall, a week or a few weeks. I forgot much of the figuring process by the time I made my 17.5", but the techniques I used during the figuring of the 10" and Steve's other mirrors helped in figuring the 17.5". This mirror is essentially, an unofficial Swayze mirror. Steve asked me if he wanted him to engrave his name on the mirror, but I declined as I did not think that was fair to Steve, considering some my work is in the mirror. Looking back, I do wish we both could have engraved our names on the mirror instead of just my name.