On thing that became apparent was the quickness one could wear down a pick axe if you take the straight strip/core mining approach. In Example 1, I dug from -0.5 to -43.5 with a size of 6x11 on average (including staircase along the outer wall) and went through a couple of Mese pickaxes in the process.
I then considered that the approach is wasteful as usually your looking for ores or mese blocks and really you only need to see one face of a node to determine if it was useful. With that in mind, I took the following approach.
Note: Get some torches.
1. Establish your initial level by mining out a 2 node high area.
2. Go to each corner and stand back a block. The axe will dig 4 spaces down, so use that ability to dig down 4 nodes out of each corner. Place a torch at the top of each corner.
3. Pick a corner and orientate yourself facing another corner. Drop into the corner.
4. Mine directly towards the other corner. You'll see light when you get there. Once you reach there, turn towards the next corner and repeat. Do this process two more times until you have carved the perimeter out.
5. Clear the level out.
Now while typing this I realized that clearing the entire level is still slightly inefficient and on a single level you could again skip two nodes and clear one node row, skip two nodes and clear one node row.
Torches will help you inspect and mark where you need to go. Depending on how you use them will dictate how many torches you need. To avoid flying, build stairs up as needed.
