After scoring the lap and rubbing the bort uniformly all over it and rolling the shit out of it with the Graves lap roller bearing tool, do you wash it with detergent and water before use?
Think YAG boule seed ends up to 50mm in diameter, or big CZ crystals with a 50x35mm face perpendicular to the long axis? Whole boules of flame fusion spinel. Just big chunks that are too much for a 4" trim saw.
The kerf width is not super-important.
I have available a new tin-lead lap and a lightly-used copper lap currently set up for 8K. Which metal would be better for general purpose hardness 7+ material?
Also, 600 mesh bort. I'm inclined to suppose that main cutting laps are not the use case for PCD. Am I wrong about that? /u/gemcuttershoofles? I see on Chinese e-commerce where there is graded whole octahedral crystal CVD bort in coarse cutting grades: would that be a good choice? Or is plain old fragments of monocrystalline material just as good, for gemcutting?
I have a couple of yoyos I bought in 2010, and some accessories. The yoyos are a Duncan Pulse and a Duncan Freehand Zero. They've say around getting light occasional use. I decided it was time to overhaul the Pulse and figure out why one side was not lighting up. When I got it apart I saw the friction stickers were real worn. After I fixed a terminal corrosion issue and reassembled the halves with fresh batteries, I decided to replace the pads and string and lube the bearing.
The "some accessories" include Duncan friction stickers, silicone stickers, and a shitload of strings. I've got 100 50/50 cotton/poly #6 ones for example. I decided to lube the bearing with some 3 in 1 PTFE dry lube. I put it back together and messed with it a bit, and then went to read about lubricating yo-yo bearings.
To cut to the chase, I've been conversing with Google AI and it suggests my optimal course is
Take the Pulse back apart
Remove the bearing. Remove the metal guards from the sides of the bearing.
Clean the bearing by immersing it in light mineral spirit, soaking for 10 min, then swishing it around a bit. Remove from solvent.
Wipe bearing with paper towel and put on end of pencil. Spin bearing until dry.
Apply tiny specks of diving-gear-grade silicone grease to the bearings.
Discard the metal shields and their retaining clips. Reassemble the yoyo with bearings exposed.
But first, remove one silicone sticker and replace it with a friction sticker.
Does all this pass a sanity check? I know, there are purpose-formulated thick yo-yo lubes I should be using, but the AI thinks my moderately exotic silicone is a reasonable stand-in.
If all that passes the smell test, there's a suggestion to take apart the Freehand Zero, expose and clean its bearing, lubricate with light sewing machine oil (yes again I know, there's a product for that, but I already own a collection of lubricants), and rebuilding with silicone stickers in place of the worn-out friction stickers it has from the factory. I'd use another 50/50 #6 string on that.
Do these seem like reasonable maintenance/upgrade steps?
Title says it all.
I'm hoping to hear "113, 114" but expecting "110, 111."
Basically what the title says, expressed preferably in rules of thumb about what distinctive properties such designs have.
Thanks in advance.
Especially rough sellers, but gemcutters strutting their stuff also welcome.
If I'm looking at the facet with a 10x loupe should I be able to see scratches or should it look matte? This is with 8k on copper.
Edit: People are not responding to the question I asked, which is what an 8k pre-polish should look like through a 10x loupe. Yes the facets look quite shiny to bare eyes. As I said I'm using 8k diamond on solid copper.
The material is YAG, that is one fact I omitted.
Edit edit: some context might be useful. The lap was a brand new old stock Graves copper lap, on it's very first charge of diamond, applied by me as my very first attempt to charge a metal lap. When I asked the question I still had too much diamond on the lap, I think. Now, through the loupe I can still see scratches but they're very fine and there's some rainbow-looking effect happening, like either diffraction or thin-film interference. I'm thinking I probably have it right, now.
Something protective that you can see into. Are there giant gem cases for that?
I have been convinced that YAG is a good starter synthetic material for a beginning facetier. So I have arranged a supply of YAG to get started with. I'll have enough colors to cut 4 stones without repeating myself. The 2 colors I won't be out of then, I have enough of that I might never use it all.
I'm hoping doing a half-dozen designs in YAG will be enough to move on to some other materials. I have available flame fusion spinel, flame fusion corundum, and CZ. What would be a good order to approach those? I'm assuming the sapphire goes last.
The title basically says it.
How are these defined? Are they chemical recipes, or absorption spectra, or eyeball comparisons to color standards? I'm guessing they are not just market names: am I wrong about that?
Did Verneuil actually prepare samples of all the stuff for which codes exist? Or has the list got later extensions? I gather that there is not a normative standard keeper of the list. Is that right?
Title says it all. I notice that the big pieces at Tom's Box of Rocks are half-boules, which seems plausibly convenient for slicing up on small trim saws.
What's the technique for splitting them?
So, I started off thinking I wanted to cut only natural material but have run into the fact that as a beginner I want to cut 10mm stones, and the necessary 13mm diameter x 9mm deep pieces of natural rough are awfully rough on the wallet.
I have seen YAG recommended as a beginner material but it also is not exactly cheap compared with other synthetics. Flame fusion spinel, otoh, seems to be pretty easy to find in pieces that would let you cut that 10mm stone for $10. You can even be a little picky about the color.
So, from a technical challenge POV, is there really a big difference between the two?
I'm trying to get good with wax dopping and would like a way of warming stones besides waving them over an alcohol flame.
I tried making the stove out of a 64-oz juice can heated with the alcohol burner and that got too hot for my liking. I was just noticing the existence of "candle warmers" as a product category and that strikes me as something not likely to get too hot. I'm wondering if anybody here has tried using an electric cup warmer or candle warmer to heal up rough for dopping with wax?
Also I have been a little afraid of transferring on to wax. I'm wondering about using red wax to dop the temp table and transferring to black wax, with the idea that it should be easier to get the first dop off with a lower-temp wax. Is that a stupid idea?