As I said in my original missive 4 months back, this really belongs in something like comp.lan.fiber, or sci.fiber.basics but there are no such groups.
Starting from more or less nowhere, I've gotten fiber strung across my campus (with some help, and donated fiber) and fiddled around with getting equipment racks in place at various buildings. Yesterday I trimmed and stripped 156 fiber ends and today I finally gritted my teeth, popped the separator on a pack of epoxy, loaded a syringe and got down to business making connections. Epoxied and baked 16 connectors, cleaved and polished 12 of those. My back is in knots from stress (hours of fiddly work), but the job went better than I had any right to expect, given that up to this point fiber connections and I have only had a "book and web learning" association.
Did not break any fibers while getting them into connectors. Actually only broke one while stripping 156.
Getting the bead of epoxy through the ferrule proved easier to manage (enough, but not too much) than expected, while getting the right amount into the back part of the connector while withdrawing the needle was harder, with nothing to see and so little volume used that the graduations on the syringe were not any help.
2 gram epoxy packs were more than enough - despite a heat-cure-only epoxy with a 4 hour pot life, it still claimed only a 45 minute syringe life - I think it was about 1.5 ml and I probably only used 0.5 ml of it- perhaps next time I'll try leaving "about half" in the package after mixing, and see if I can get two syringes of use-time out of it. 4 gram pack would have been an utter waste.
Some of the cleaves were a bit too much (fiber snapped while being scribed) but they all look good when polished, so evidently none managed to fracture down into the ferrule despite my poorly calibrated scribing force.
Was very happy to have gotten a microscope with dual mode (Oblique/coaxial) lighting. For a complete novice, scoping the fibers as polishing progressed was helpful, and with singlemode fiber only one of the two modes (oblique) shows the core. Both are good when checking for dirt and scratches, as they highlight different things.
Should get easier from here.