And so it begins...!
Yup, that's more hand lapping of glass for you. It occurred to me that since last time, I had acquired a diamond wheel and made an arbour to fit in the mill so I could just run that across the top and deck it flat and square...and then it further occurred to me that this would be an excellent way to aerosolise the glass getting it into my lungs and liberally coated over everything in a several metre range...so maybe not then! To give you an idea, the white snot you can see is glass dust in water. The tube was out of square by a good mm or more (gap between a square at the highest point across to the lowest) so it's taken a little while. The plate is a DMT Extra-Extra-Course 8x3" DiaSharp and I have to say, it's excellent. Apart from steel, I've lapped glass with it and taken it to the edge of a 600x300 bathroom tile to shave about 6mm off and it shows no sign of any wear at all. The tube is nearly perfect at one end but needs refining as there is slight chipping around the edge. It also needs to be less groovy so a higher grit is called for:
Since this tube is larger in diameter, it will fit on my 3" wide diamond plate but not the smaller (and cheaper!) ones I have in higher grits. I've ordered another that could be fine or could be course - the price was right so, we'll see what turns up! Got my eye on a double-sided Sharpal plate to fill in the gaps too - depends what turns up from the US of A. Lordy lordy the age verification process is a pain though. You surely don't need to be 18+ (and prove it in advance!) to order a sharpening stone though, right?!
A quick Google suggest not in either the UK or US...and yet my sanity clearly needed abrading! In case anyone has this issue, the key is to re-enter your credit card details NOT as requested to match what's on the card but to leave off the Mr/Mrs/Miss/Other and use your full name. So Mr J Smith would be John Smith. Then it works...if you're lucky. Painful...but I digress! Having dug out the link to previous res glass lapping, I can see that previously I used lapping film and that might be wide enough and may have saved me some cash. Ah well, bound to come in useful once it arrives - even if it's for tiling!
Yup, that's more hand lapping of glass for you. It occurred to me that since last time, I had acquired a diamond wheel and made an arbour to fit in the mill so I could just run that across the top and deck it flat and square...and then it further occurred to me that this would be an excellent way to aerosolise the glass getting it into my lungs and liberally coated over everything in a several metre range...so maybe not then! To give you an idea, the white snot you can see is glass dust in water. The tube was out of square by a good mm or more (gap between a square at the highest point across to the lowest) so it's taken a little while. The plate is a DMT Extra-Extra-Course 8x3" DiaSharp and I have to say, it's excellent. Apart from steel, I've lapped glass with it and taken it to the edge of a 600x300 bathroom tile to shave about 6mm off and it shows no sign of any wear at all. The tube is nearly perfect at one end but needs refining as there is slight chipping around the edge. It also needs to be less groovy so a higher grit is called for:
Since this tube is larger in diameter, it will fit on my 3" wide diamond plate but not the smaller (and cheaper!) ones I have in higher grits. I've ordered another that could be fine or could be course - the price was right so, we'll see what turns up! Got my eye on a double-sided Sharpal plate to fill in the gaps too - depends what turns up from the US of A. Lordy lordy the age verification process is a pain though. You surely don't need to be 18+ (and prove it in advance!) to order a sharpening stone though, right?!
A quick Google suggest not in either the UK or US...and yet my sanity clearly needed abrading! In case anyone has this issue, the key is to re-enter your credit card details NOT as requested to match what's on the card but to leave off the Mr/Mrs/Miss/Other and use your full name. So Mr J Smith would be John Smith. Then it works...if you're lucky. Painful...but I digress! Having dug out the link to previous res glass lapping, I can see that previously I used lapping film and that might be wide enough and may have saved me some cash. Ah well, bound to come in useful once it arrives - even if it's for tiling!