Warning: an old toolmaker at the Rockford shop talked me out of chasing mirror finishes on vise jaws
Last week I was stoning a set of soft jaws trying to get them dead shiny, and a guy who's been on manual mills since 1979 walked over and said, "Pretty doesn't hold tenths, flat does." He pulled out a granite plate and a .0005 indicator and showed me my jaws were out about a thou in the middle, even though they looked perfect. I'd been chasing looks for two years and never once checked them on a plate. So now I'm wondering how many of you check jaw flatness with an indicator instead of just eyeballing it?