Buffing and Polishing Materials

[thewrightthings]

Cosmic and George, you folks are great, sharing all that valuable info.  No matter how long you do something, there is always more to learn, and having such info written down provides a great resource to keep referring back to.
   Thanks
          Paula

[Rayw1]

Long story but related.
Our lapidary club has recently become a little health and safety orientated. Our jewellery polisher is just 2 spindles open to the surroundings.  Having read the MSDS for Rouge, we observed the warning "that while not toxic it does contain silicates which could be harmful to lungs", so built an enclosed hood complete with extractor fan and also supply face masks for members to use.
Yesterday I visited a jewellers supply business for the first time in over 12 months, and fell into the clutches of a really good salesman.  He travels to jewellers all over the place and so I thought his advice was of value.  We were told that the old, fairly common I presume, method of finishing precious metals, using Tripoli and Rouge is now very much passe and that most jewellers now use other methods.  The suppliers catalogue in fact has 5 different Dialux brand polishes - white, blue, green, red and yellow - of which white blue and red are recommended for all metals with the others being for specific plastics or softer metals.  The salesman however was steering us to a product called Polistar Emulsion, which is a chromium carbonate based material, sold originally for dental ceramics and more recently for polishing metal prosthetics (think hip replacement).

So my question is what do jewellers/hobbyists use these days.  Is it correct that Tripoli/rouge is now being phased out due to safety issues or were we making up the sales target for the mnoth?

[MrsWTownsend]

I'm no expert but if it's being phased out, it's being done very slowly...  There are still massive quantities of giant hunks at all of the jewelry stores I've been to lately.