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Post by mountainshadowrocks on Dec 31, 2017 12:03:30 GMT -5
Unlurking... I recently slabbed some rocks for the first time. They are being cut on a new saw with a new blade and the combo seems to be leaving them very, very smooth. I have a new flat disc cabbing setup and have never polished anything. I'm not sure what I need to do to get the flat sides of the slabs/pet wood polished. Do I just hit them with the diamond paste/pad combo or do they need more grinding? Even under magnification, I can barely see saw marks. And, yes, I realize not all wood polishes, but this is pretty agatized and others have polished it up nicely. Thanks for any advice you can throw my way.
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Post by gmitch067 on Dec 31, 2017 12:30:13 GMT -5
Welcome to the forum! I do not cut my own slabs, but buy them from various locations. When I receive them I evaluate them for use in cabbing or as display mini-slabs. I am not very mechanized, and I do my work by hand mostly. To get rid of the saw marks, I just lay a sheet of 80-grit silicon carbide wet/dry sandpaper on a flat surface (a cutting board works fine) and add a sprinkling of water (no... make that a good puddle!)... then aggressively run the fresh-cut slab over it until I no longer can see the saw marks. If I want to make a display slab, I use finer and finer grit sandpapers - 80 to 5000 grit papers can be purchased through Amazon. After 3000 grit I get a feel for when to start to use a polish. For that I use a dremel tool with a felt wheel. You might want to check out Tela's rockjunquie thread on hand cabbing forum.rocktumblinghobby.com/thread/80300/hand-cabbing-info-requestI hope this helps you.
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Post by mountainshadowrocks on Dec 31, 2017 12:40:32 GMT -5
I have the equipment to polish, I just don't know if I need to start on the bigger grit wheel and work down to a smaller grit, if I don't have a lot of saw marks to start with?
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Post by rockjunquie on Dec 31, 2017 12:44:18 GMT -5
You could start out on the 600 and see if it leaves any scratches. What looks smooth isn't really polished. There's a difference.
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Post by gmitch067 on Dec 31, 2017 12:51:35 GMT -5
Sorry... I misunderstood your setup.
From my hand sanding I noticed that as I progressed to a finer and finer sandpaper, the minute saw marks that I missed earlier will show up more pronounced, causing me to backtrack to a coarser grit.
Your new saw and blade producing minimal cut irregularities is a blessing tho... You might not have to start with an 80-grit disk. It stands to reason that starting with a 220-grit flat disk would be a good choice.
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Post by mountainshadowrocks on Dec 31, 2017 13:29:30 GMT -5
Okay,thanks. I will give it a go and see how things look.
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