Had a crack at the Smith Bar, by Jeff Graham. Usually I'm fine polishing beryls but this guy just wouldn't behave, possibly due to the extreme angles I needed to do.
this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023
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Faceting
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The gearloose guy is in his 80s and does pretty much everything himself, as he's not really trained anyone else the secrets behind his laps are likely to die with him. This seems to be a common thing in faceting - we rely on a couple of people to know/do lots, and then they get old and die and stuff is lost.
I buy direct from Lightning Lap - https://lightninglap.com/
I'm using their resin 1200 as my propolish, as it's been recommended as a replacement for the now defunct NuBonds (it cuts closer to a 3k steel lap so works as prepolish). It's been a lot better behaved than my old steel 3ks, certainly. I've got a Linde A lap of theirs coming in the post which I'm excited to try. I've never had much luck with anything I need to spread a polishing slurry on, so stuff that just needs water is ideal for me!
I've been recently going 600 steel to 1200 resin to CeOx, but I should probably put a 1200 steel in there as well, as being lazy probably made the polish not great.
https://lightninglap.com/collections/laps/products/lightning-lap-dlite-diamond-laps
https://lightninglap.com/collections/laps/products/lightning-lap-ceox-cerium-oxide-polishing-lap
I'm in the UK so I seem to pay more for postage and tax than the value of the discs!
Bookmarking these, thanks for the links!