I admire your fancy wood scratching and never get tired of seeing your fine work.
You are very correct when you mention that the Doiron electric checkering machine has a long learning curve. Instead of grinding up good stocks I practiced on 2 1/2" hard maple and Black Walnut dowels that I turned on a wood lathe. As you know when you can get around a round object without any run outs, skips, wandering or major Boo-Boos the semi flat areas seem like a cake walk. That "tail" is a bear to get to not pull or hold you back sometimes. I can see how simple point patterns are best for the Doiran and a skilled hand can make fast work of them. But your very artful patterns just seem to soak up hand work by the bucketful don't they?
One other key item to get is good light. You want to have good light that you can control and move around. You need light and dark shadowing sometimes plus good light will save your tired old eyes a lot. Natural light is great but I now need extra even in the day time. Nice to be able to difuse the light also.
