Bought a flat lap, any info will help me!

[Dughug]

The Perspex lap is often used with Cerium Oxide or tin oxide as a polishing lap. It works OK for quartz or stones less than hardness 7 to 7.5. You can also use a CD with Cerium or Tin Oxide it does the same thing.

Mix the oxide into a very liquid paste apply with a brush or spray bottle & you should easily get a high polish. (i.e. if you had a reasonable pre polish).

Some facetors also use the Perspex disks as spacers when they use the cheaper Chinese thin laps. What ever works for you is good. The main thing is gust try it. You certainly got a bargain with your machine.

 

[AtomRat]

The Perspex lap is often used with Cerium Oxide or tin oxide as a polishing lap. It works OK for quartz or stones less than hardness 7 to 7.5. You can also use a CD with Cerium or Tin Oxide it does the same thing.

Mix the oxide into a very liquid paste apply with a brush or spray bottle & you should easily get a high polish. (i.e. if you had a reasonable pre polish).

Some facetors also use the Perspex disks as spacers when they use the cheaper Chinese thin laps. What ever works for you is good. The main thing is gust try it. You certainly got a bargain with your machine.

Thanks for letting me know its a good score, I wasn't too sure yet. Shes very friendly and we had a very problem free trade. She knew its worth more but wants me to use it rather than it collecting dust in her shed.

Ill clean it up.. what cleaning products are ok to use withouggt contaminating anything

 

[AtomRat]

I found the issue to my wabble. It seems for some reason the diamond lap doesn't fully slide onto the shaft, its a bit tight but..

The main thing I noticed, it is like the steel lap or whatever big lap is there needs is dropped too low.

The only way to seem to prevent this was to have a 'gasket' or a bit of leather..even a washer to raise the heavy lap and the diamond / copper lap sandwich up by 2mm. Withought a spacer, the main nut won't tighten onto the discs ir squash them like its meant to.

Am I missing a disc or 'spacer'? The machine shaft is nit wobbly in any direction so its not the shaft or something like that.

Can I use cardboard or felt..? Or what am I missing man?! Lol

I can't see anything else it came with to prevent this issue. The only extras are small washers and I think if I used them it wouldnt hold the sandwich tight and would make it wabbly when pressure is applied to the edges and could warp..if u need photos ill send.

I can't use the machine until this gap issue is fixed

 

[Lefty]

"The main thing I noticed, it is like the steel lap or whatever big lap is there needs is dropped too low."

Sounds like you're referring to the master lap, part of the machine on which you sit your interchangeable faceting and polishing laps. Not sure why it would be too low but a Perspex lap with the centre hole made slightly larger might help.

Or maybe a stack of old worthless Savage Garden cd's

I sometimes use a Perspex lap charged with cerium oxide to polish the table of larger - 12mm plus - quartz gems. The smaller stones are ok but the table of the bigger ones tends to catch and drag on the typemetal surface now and then, with a horrific screeching noise. Doesn't really happen with the Perspex. They say it rounds the facet edges but I had difficulty seeing any really obvious rounding. In any case I only use it for the table, as soon as you polish the stars on a metal lap I would think any rounding should sharpen back up.

 

[AtomRat]

Ill give a cd a go, cheers. Its basically all it needed.. but still theres a flaw somewhere

And yep I meant master lap. Its a little bit worn and unfortunately some deep scratches across its surface.

I swear the used does have pladtic melted ti them..not wax..unless the wax does that over time

 

[AtomRat]

Just realised as I'm cleaning up my back shed which is my mothers old pottery shed..

I've just spotted the two very large obvious spinning wheels in the corner potters use.. its git a foot pedal..waterproof...omg why didn't I think of it before...

I've got two 15" flat laps right here!! All I need is more diamond laps and I'm all ruddy go!! Looks like ill be able to polish much larger rocks now

 

[Lefty]

I can't see any reason why that wouldn't work as a flat lap for polishing agate or thunder egg halves etc. what are the flat wheel s made of? Cast iron does not allow silicon carbide to penetrate the surface and at our club they hVe been using one going through the various grits and washing thoroughly with water in between each grit without any scratching problems for years. They do use a separate one dedicated solely to polish (tin oxide).

 

[AtomRat]

I accidently deleted my text...3 times..

The pottery wheel has cast allot main base or lap we will now say and fibreglass splash pan which has a coek in the sump for fast cleaning.

.....

Played with diamond lap and stuck a quart onto a hexagonal shaft pencil with superglue and had a buzz. Did it very very very fast as a quick test while my real glue sets on a proper rock for faceting tomorrow. The dark one is tourmaline. Didn't have a polish lap so I used tin oxide on a mirror and on my boot again just to see the outcome. If its this cruisy by hand, I can't wait to get right into it!

 

[AtomRat]

After learning a bit from books, vids and talk I've started having a go with the facetor. I don't have diamond powder yet so polishings kinda out of the question and tedious, ill wait until I get to to continue on this stone.

Having only a single 64 index wheel I'm a bit limited but found plans online to suit it and away I went.

Stuffed up the first one on pavillion index numbers, so this is really the second and turned out much better. Not having it polished is hard to see the flaws right now.

Its only a cracked up piece of smokey quartz for a test. I intentionally used this piece to see if it would last the faceting, which is has with no corner chips ( yet, still have the crown to do after I polish this side )

Frustrating having to use an allen key all the time for minor adjustments of height and along the bed but I can live with it.

This may be wrong..let me know hey..but I used tin oxide on perspex lap to polish the first three 90 facets

Cheers to the couple of experienced facetors for helping me with questions at the start

What sort of light should I be using and where should it be positioned for faceting?

 

[AtomRat]

Wanted to have a go at the crown so I had a go at using the dop adjustment joiner and swapped dops ( bit off ) and also then I put the quill back in it was slight off there too. Lesson learnt here, measure and look. Had fun cutting the remaining facets but realised I must have skipped an index by 1 again so threw it off. Continued what I could to get a rough brilliant shape for my first faceting Also noticed that the 45 holder wasn't at right angle so something was out of whack the whole time anyway.

Considering I havnt been shown a thing yet and only by ear and dodgy vids...I recon it came up 'good' shape ( roughly )

My camera warped the hell out of this photo with odd perspective..I have no clue how that's happened...my hand looks broken and my thumb looks 2x shorter

 

[AtomRat]

Thanks for the like Heatho.. I feel slightly alienated when I talk about this topic here considering there are soo many professional facetors here, bloody hard.

 

[Heatho]

No worries mate, gotta start somewhere, keep at it, practice makes perfect.

 

[AtomRat]

Cheers bud

 

[AtomRat]

Is chrome oxide the same as chromium oxide?