JUST WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE

I was shooting a football game a month ago using my Nikon D6 body and my Nikkor 300mm f/2.8 prime lens.  Right in the middle of the game the AF quit working and no amount of coaxing would get it to work.  Plan B....I always bring along my Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 and a 1.7x multiplier.  That gives me 340mm on the long end and it was good enough to finish the game.
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I figured the contact points were dirty so after I got home I cleaned them off with an alcohol pad and refitted the 300mm to the D6.  Worked great.  Until the next week when it did the same thing...right in the middle of the action.
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Plan C.  Get more aggressive with cleaning technique. They used to make a small abrasive brush to...."rough up" the contact points a bit and make for a better connection.  But I don't have one and no amount of looking found one for sale.  So I got inventive.  I went into the paint brush drawer in my workshop and found some sandpaper but the grit was too coarse.  However...there was one small piece of 320 grit silicon carbide emery paper.  So I scissored off a small piece as wide as a #2 pencil.  Then I got a #2 pencil from the pencil drawer and draped the emery paper around the eraser end. Then I covered up the lens opening as best I could and "roughed up" the electrical contact points but not too aggressively.  I was careful not to press too hard and, when finished, I used my Giotto Blaster to clear away any metal/sand debris from the lens opening.  I did nothing to the camera contact points.  Then I went for a short ride to make a few shots and see how well it was working.  Worked great.  I will continue to use the camera/lens randomly until track season this Spring when I'll need it to work perfectly.  Hopefully it will stand up to a lot of use and I won't have to send the lens in to Nikon repair...it costs more to send it UPS (plus insurance) than the repair.
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THE PHOTO: It's just a bunch of reed canary grass with some red osier dogwood and some alder mixed in and even a few cattails right along the shore line of Little Elkhart Lake.  AF focus is working...looks pretty sharp to me. 
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AN AFTERTHOUGHT:  Wouldn't this shot make a pretty tough jig saw puzzle?
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BEST IN LARGE.