He didn't tell Dian about the half second.
Not because he was hiding it, exactly. More because he wasn't sure what it meant yet and saying something half-formed to Dian tended to produce either a non-answer or a new and worse training exercise, neither of which he was in the mood for before breakfast.
He ate, drank his tea, sat with the wood for the morning session and worked on cracking it against the grain the way Dian had suggested.
It took most of the session and what he eventually produced was less a clean transverse crack and more a kind of diagonal compromise between along and across that satisfied neither intention, but Dian looked at it and said closer, which meant it was at least in the right direction.
