Winston
I suggest trying to go straight from the EZ-lap 1200 to the buffing wheel and see if you get a similar result. That's one of the big advantages in my mind, that it can be very fast and you can skip a lot of the intermediate steps. Same for the 40-degree microbevel -- try going straight from 30 degrees on the the EZ-lap to 40 degrees on the 1 micron diamonds.