In no particular order...

I have an oil filter cutting tool, but need to locate it after things got stuffed "wherever" when we had to deal with a basement plumbing leak last year.

I feel no detectable looseness between the bronze gear and the cam gear. I do think that I can push the oil pump drive shaft forward & backward maybe. 015" +/- due to bushing wear.

Dwayne Porter and I spoke about the melonized gear option a couple years ago when I was collecting parts. I run a high-volume oil pump, and the open spring loads with the new roller cam are about 600#s. If something about my combination does result in excessive wear on the treated steel gear, that's going to put more dangerous sh!t in my engine than the softer bronze gear, so I took his advice and decided to play it safe at this time.

We also talked about the possibility of sharp edges on the cam gear causing wear, which is why I used a small wire brush with a Dremel on the cam gear before installation. Not sure if it would have been better to use a small grinding stone and bevel the edges of the teeth, though.

I took a number of pictures tonight. However, the image sizes may be too large to upload directly from my phone. If they're too big, I'll have to shrink 'em some on my laptop and attach them tomorrow.