Dear Richard,

Thank you for submitting your interesting study to Geochronology. Despite some differences in their judgements, the reviewers and also myself agree that this is an important contribution for better understanding the processes that control track revelation, beyond empirical descriptions.

The reviewers also provide valuable suggestions how your study will become more accessible to a broader readership. I will not reiterate the whole discussion, but would like to shortly summarize what I consider the most important topics for a revised version of your manuscript:

- A broader introduction into the topic is required, with more methodological background information and also including more details on the experimental set-up the study is based on.

- Improving quality and readability of the figures and their captions. The reviewers provided various valuable suggestions for this, including more intuitive abbreviations for the different experimental conditions, as suggested by Ed Sobel.

- Including at least two additional figures, one explaining the different terms related to the geometric configurations, and one showing photos with track tips illustrating your definition about when a track is considered “measurable”.

- Stronger emphasizing the practical implications for routine applications of fission track analysis.

- The most controversial conclusion drawn from you study is about the validity of the concept of equivalent time. I agree with the reviewer that the wording on this topic should be a bit more cautious.

As you mentioned in your reply, the various changes will considerably lengthen the paper, but I really think that this is worthwhile for increasing the impact of your study.

I am looking forward to reading the revised version of your manuscript.
Best regards, Cornelia

Dear Richard,
Thank you for the detailed revision of your manuscript. I agree with Ed Zobel that it now makes an excellent contribution for “Geochronology”, and that, by providing the additional text and figures, you made the topic accessible for a much wider group of readers. It certainly is an interesting and thought-provoking study addressing the basic concepts underlying our interpretation of fission track data.
Ed Zobel made a couple of further suggestions, which should be incorporated in the manuscript before it is ready for publication. Thanks again for submitting your work to “Geochronology”.
All the best, Cornelia

Richard:

Following the associate editor's recommendation, this paper is accepted subject to technical corrections as noted. Please make the corrections and submit a final version through the Copernicus system.

In general, I agree with the reviewers and the AE that the paper is better longer. Frankly, the significance of some parts of the paper was not obvious in the first draft and became much clearer on reading the review correspondence. In any case, thanks very much for submitting this work to Geochronology and putting significant effort into the revisions.

-- greg