I can not find any diamond grit in a size between 600 and 1200.
However I have read that tripoli is comparable to 800-1200 diamond grit.
Some if not most of my problems are that the 1200 grit deals very slowly with the scratches from the 600 grit step.
I decided to take my rhodochrosite trough a tripoli polish. It appeared to remove the 600 grit scratches that I had been dealing with. It did dig deeper along mineral changes in the stone (white wavy bits) but not very bad. I'm interested in what the 1200 diamond grit will do with the stone now.
Something that I find maddening is that I'm now sure that if I was willing to drop the $1K - 2K for a proper cabbing setup I wouldn't be having this issue. I say this because I think that the expanding wheels on a full cabbing machine would take these scratches out in short order. Or to put it a different way - I'm not sure that I'm doing anything wrong, it is just that my equipment works the stone slowly.
It is a funny situation. Drop a couple grand and *know* I have equipment that can make better stones than I'm able but have no idea if I can make stones people will buy. Or, drop a couple hundred dollars that I'm willing to lose in order to test a possible income stream and constantly question if I can make a go of stones or if I'm just dealing with the limitations of my starting equipment.
Custom Search
