Gloves
So after much head-scratching and frustration trying to get my mirror to move smoothly over the pitch lap so I can finish the polish and get back to figuring, a friend from the ATM class (he’s also one of the coordinaters of the annual ScopeX astronomy and telescope expo suggested rubber gloves. This is such an obvious and simple solution, I can’t understand why I didn’t think of it myself.
So a few days back when my wife headed out for some shopping, I asked her to get me a set. Instead, she brought me gardening gloves, the cheap sort with the little rubber nodules dotting the inner fingers and palms. These should work even better because they’re more comfortable than pure rubber, they’ll probably grip more consistently at the glass gets wet, and they add a thin layer of insulation to keep the glass thermally stable (Don’t want any localised heating causing the shape to deform while I’m polishing).
I’ll try them out tonight, and post again in a few days with my results!