Digital BW, The Print

I'm looking for a good work flow converting my D100 NEF's to B&W.  I 
can get to B&W easy enough and the final print is nice but they're 
missing some depth and contrast.  After tweaking in Capture 3 I 
convert to TIF and open in Photoshop 6 where I've used simple convert 
to grayscale, curves, etc. and the little more involved channel 
mixer.  I've tried creating layers of hue and saturation per Ian 
Lyons and a few other methods.  I'm using the VM inks with Paul 
Roark's curves right now but have tried the Boley and Krebs curves 
too.  I've tried the VM-S but haven't tried the FS inks yet.  I print 
to a 1280.  I have an 870 too with MIS dye ink and can get real nice 
Black Only prints.  The only thing is I don't like the dots. 

I keep working on the front end of taking decent images and maybe 
that's where I should concentrate.  I'm doing lots of reading and 
have hundreds of test images with different settings, paper, drivers, 
etc.  It's becoming an obsession with me.  I think about this stuff 
all the time but don't get me wrong I love it and know I can only get 
better.  When I started with color four or five years ago I went 
through the same pain with inks, color management and such but I 
think B&W is even more of a challenge.

Anyway, sorry for the long sob story but I'm wondering how do you get 
to your B&W image?  Do you do it all in grayscale and then convert to 
RGB or do you keep it in RGB all the way?  There're a bunch of plug-
ins out there for converting to B&W but they can't do much more than 
Photoshop right?  Is Piezography the answer?

Thanks,

Tom Husband