After applying epoxy to the blade handle and arrange nuggets of turquoise, how is the grinding and polishing done?. In order to make a smooth handle, do I use the belt grinder with a ? size grit belt followed by buffing the stones on handle using which jewelers rouge compound to polish the turquoise?. If this process does not apply, please advise me what is the technique, thanks. Rey
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grinding,polishing turquoise on knife handle
- Thread starter Rey Garza
- Start date
I've polished turquoise using standard AO abrasives. Unless there's an enormous amount of waste to remove, I would start at about 80 or 120 for rough shaping. Just work through the grits like polishing anything else. Tripoli, and rouge for the final polish, or wet/dry fine grit papers and then crocus cloth. Be careful not to get it too hot or it can crack. Be careful about the dust, when grinding any rock you're producing silica dust which is dangerous.
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I've found the trickiest part of grinding and polishing something like that isn't the turquoise, but the epoxy. You have to be careful not to overheat it and get it gummy when working it. If that happens it looks pretty crappy, especially with polishing compounds embedded in it. The epoxy's surface texture won't come smooth if it gums up and erodes causing more of an uneven orange peel like texture. So take it slow and use clean buffing wheels.
Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith
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If you used regular epoxy, wet sand it by hand with wet-or-dry SC papers to as fine a grit as available. It should look great at 2500. A final polish with tin oxide will make it gleam if needed.
The resins used to do this commercially are a bit different. Opticon ( what I use), or Clear Cast, are acrylics, and made to set hard and polish bright. Regular epoxy isn't.
The enemies of getting a good finish with embedding chip inlay are heat ( makes the resin break down) and the swarf and polish ( gets worked into the resin and makes it ugly).
Go slow, keep things cool, use power equipment at slow speed with lots of water dunks.
Stacy
The resins used to do this commercially are a bit different. Opticon ( what I use), or Clear Cast, are acrylics, and made to set hard and polish bright. Regular epoxy isn't.
The enemies of getting a good finish with embedding chip inlay are heat ( makes the resin break down) and the swarf and polish ( gets worked into the resin and makes it ugly).
Go slow, keep things cool, use power equipment at slow speed with lots of water dunks.
Stacy