one way i have done squish test is to slide 2 peices of solder into the plug hole, one on each side. this way if your using stock headgasket and you dont have a spare as long as your squish is what your wanting your ready to go. your essentially doing the same thing to keep the piston from wobbling side to side. also for op and squish, its my understanding that the closer the head is to the piston and the larger squish band area % the more velocity the fuel charge will have towards the plug. as this velocity increases it can also put enough force and heat on the charge to pre ignite it. as your squish band area gets smaller the tighter your squish can be say .040" on a given fuel and trapped compression ratio without detonating, this would be for mostly topend power i think. however if you open this area up say .060" or so that you are using and a larger squish band area the power will come on sooner and generally still be able to keep the topend rev out power and still be able to run the same fuel and trapped compression ratio.. also i did once set my squish to around .030" once.. it was not a good thing. haha i realise this is a contraversal subject and there are many variable involved but maybe this will get some more input on the subject. so did you get the motor together and running??