The 220 grit sanding/smoothing step was exactly what I was looking for and the new method of grinding to marks on the top make for symmetrical stones with a good bezel line.
I'm well pleased.
I determined beyond any shadow of a doubt that the silicon carbide sanding pads are garbage. After sanding with 220 and 360 grit my stones did not have any ridges and were very nice looking. Then came the 600 grit sanding step. I had three 600 grit silicon carbide pads left. They put facets and ridges all over my stones. My irritation bordered on pure rage at my best efforts so far being defaced. Well, luckily I had ordered 600 diamond grit with the 360 grit and charged up a pad. The 600 diamond grit cleaned it up quick enough.
Then came the polishing. The tripoli shined up the stones on par with my normal two step polish of tripoli and cerium oxide. The cerium oxide wasn't able to shine it better than tripoli alone.
This makes sense based on something I read. One of my cab books makes the point that old timers were able to get a fine polish with just tripoli. That they had no need for finer grits.
Seems to me that if I can do a good enough job sanding, the tripoli is good enough for the found rocks I'm using now (feldspar, agate pebbles (not really sure what these pebbles are), and "quartzy" type stones). I'm planning on only using the cerium oxide for stones with poorly sanded spots.
Something else I found is that fine diamond grit can cut/grind as well as polish. I found this out on some stones where I was lazy on the fine grind step. I just kept to the edge of the pad and used moderate to heavy pressure.
So far the shapes I've been cutting are ovals, rounds, and thin ellipses. The ovals and rounds stay on the dop well enough but the thin ellipses do not. I suspect that this is caused by the high domes I've been cutting. Going forward I'll cut low to medium domes on that shape.
High domes can look nice but very high ones are a pain to smooth. I think I'll stop cutting that type.
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