100grit grind -
When going down to the bezel and the outer top lines I had no chipping. So I decided to finish the rough forming.
What I was unable to capture in a pic is how the banding can be seen at different levels in the stone and how it stands out when the light catches the sheen.
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220grit grind -
In showing these to my wife just now she said "I thought you drew those lines on". I said "no". And then she goes "ooooohhhhh!".
Women bring color to an otherwise gray world.
In the interest of saving time I'm not going to take pics of the 220 and 600 grit sandings.
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360grit sanding --
I wish I could capture the 3D shimmering bands. Very nice.
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Tripoli shined them up nicely. However, a number of bunched scratches showed up after polishing. I've seen these before on other rocks and I'm not sure if they were missed on the sanding steps or I polished too fast and too dry and caused some "flow".
Regardless, I'm going to polish them with cerium oxide now in an attempt to take care of those scratches.
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Well, that didn't get rid of the groups of scratches. My wife tells me she can only see them if I point them out and she looks real hard. But they stand out to me. Like a huge neon sign is pointing them out.
So I took them back to the 600grit sanding and hunted the things down. Based on how hard they were to get out, I suspect they showed up much earlier. Possibly around the 220grit sanding. But what stands out on polishing is *very* hard to see earlier on.
On polishing with tripoli for the second time there were cloudy areas (not full mirror shine). Not sure the cause of that, but I'll try another go with the cerium oxide.
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They're a bit better. One still has some faint scratches and some dull area. But the other one is OK.
Tempted to put up this pair with the contrast bumped up in order to give an idea what the gold sheen looks like.
