Paul Williams wrote:
A similar thing happened to my father while in medical school in=20 Sheffield. As students in the early-50s, they were all required to learn =
how to sharpen the old-style solid scalpels. They would spend an hour or =
more honing a fine edge on the scalpel on a series of stones only to=20 have their instructor come by check the edge, blunt it on the edge of=20
the stone and tell them to try again. Needless to say, the old man can=20 sharpen the carving fork for Sunday dinner to a surgical edge!
Let me tell you when a buffing wheel catches a gold casting, it gets a flinging and one has a disaster on his hands if it lands on a precious, feathery-edged margin. Can you say "start over"? Buffing a denture or partial denture with wrought or cast wires to catch in the wheel is really fun, too. Plus, as you allude to your father's medical school experiences, the cantankerousness/mean-spiritedness of instructors was always simmering in dental school, too.
Ken Wehrenberg, Hermann, MO --slow your buffing wheels down a bit, they can be dangerous, for a safer job, use polishing points where possible, too!