“I did not want a different result. I wanted the option to change my mind between the second act and the third.”
David had a fixed system placed more than a decade earlier and was satisfied with it. What changed was not dissatisfaction but the shape of his working life. He performs close-up and parlour work four nights a week, and had begun to find the permanence of a single finish limiting in a way he had not anticipated when he chose it.
The Chicago team's answer was a qualified one. Transition to a magnetic interface is a revision, with everything that implies, and his specialist was clear that satisfaction with an existing result is a legitimate reason not to proceed. They discussed it across two consultations before David decided to go ahead.
His registered collection now runs to three plates: an everyday brushed steel plate he wears most of the time, a polished silver plate for the parlour set, and a gold plate commissioned for his daughter's wedding. He describes the third as the reason he did it and the first as the one that matters. He is emphatic, unprompted, that none of them are used in an effect.
He is candid about the handling. “It took me a month to stop being nervous about changing it,” he says. “Now it takes eleven seconds and I think about it about as much as I think about a watch.”
Individual results and experiences vary. Accounts are published with the participant’s permission, reviewed with them before publication and withdrawn at their request. Names appear as a first name and last initial.