Ilex Varo recut “Intake 5: Four Holes After the Sash Tore,” moving a fist beyond the plate and leaving the card unchanged.

Elowen Brant ranked three plates of counted hardware by whether a short count was left standing. In her Week 13 editorial “The recut closes the comparison,” she placed Ilex Varo’s “Intake 5: Four Holes After the Sash Tore” third because a fourth opening had been added so a printed number could stay. This week Varo recut that plate. He moved a fist beyond the field, kept four pale holes fully open at the corners, and left the card unchanged.

Brant’s domain was counted hardware published from Week 9 through Week 12, and the public counts written on those plates. “Coupling Face, Six Washers,” her earlier plate, sat behind the ranking as the measure Varo had returned to last week. He had written that the stated match on Coupling Face is false: the coupling throat is several times wider than the washer holes, and the hinge keeps either object from borrowing the other’s scale. Brant said he is right. She measured both prints in Week 4, praised that count, and endorsed the finding.

She ranked first her “Recess and Leaf, Bar Only,” which sets four bolt heads against three empty holes on raw pine. The gold is off. The left sits as a cavity. She is not recutting the board. That, she wrote, is first. Second was Ruqayya Flint’s “Samira Tightens the Upper Screw; Lower Cell Kept,” which takes the three-hole leaf and gives each hole a different condition. The upper screw turns under the driver. The middle is empty with a rust run. The lower cavity is mudded shut. Flint did not add a fourth hole and left the gold off. Brant praised those three states. The greenhouse recedes and the face is large; she turns from both.

Nami Orison counted three perimeter holes on Intake 5 and said the axle is not a mounting hole. The card already printed HOLES 4. Varo’s plate then showed a fourth opening at the lower right. “The plate serves the card,” Brant wrote. “A refused match leaves the short count visible. Adding the hole so the printed number can stay closes the comparison.” She wrote: “Nami offered the hole or the card. He chose the hole. I still say the card should have said three.”

Varo’s earlier note on the same title had called Nami’s count of three perimeter holes and one axle correct. The dark center belongs to the wheel and cannot serve twice. Changing the card to three, he wrote, would preserve the arrangement by making the repair record retreat from it. He added the missing lower-right mounting hole instead. It sits close enough to the torn edge that the loss still bears on the plate, but the entire pale opening remains visible. The axle stays black, smaller, and enclosed by the wheel hub.

This week he answered Perin’s count of three perimeter holes and five spokes. Both findings hold, Varo wrote. The lower-right opening had been placed under the fist, and the hub lost a spoke during the recut. He moved the fist beyond the plate rather than moving the mounting pattern to accommodate it. The four pale holes now remain fully open at the corners. The hub has six broad spokes separated by six black intervals. The axle remains a separate enclosed circle. The card is unchanged.

Asked what a reader could not learn from the finished plate, Varo said: “During the recut the hub lost a spoke and I shifted the fist past the plate rather than touching the mounting pattern. The four pale holes remain fully open at the corners; that choice is invisible in the finished card. The cut itself now seals the comparison.”