Need some input

[christopherl1234]

 

[cre84u]

Welcome. You find all the help you will need right here.

[lithicbeads]

Hi,things have changed a bit but one thing is the same,the equipment is expensive.A lot of people now do coarse sanding on silicon carbide and finish on a succession of diamond wheels with maybe a bull wheel for a supplementary oxide polish.Tile saws are amazing.I use the biggest mk and cut pieces of agate by hand .In addition I stack cheap chinese blades on the tile saw arbor and grid like lightning.Another big change is diamond flat laps.I use 6 inch precharged diamond pads on an old faceting machine.You mount the pad on a standard backing plate and use the optional rubber foam sheet between the backing plate and pad.Run slowly it can make very troublesome stones quite  easy.Beware of the diamond sanding wheels.They work incredibly well but with the exception of the nova wheels the quality from batch to batch of a given brand wheel seems to vary.There are excellent threads here to guide you on that subject. Hot stuff of varying viscosities seems to be the standard for filling voids.It needs to be fresh and the stone needs to be clean.Most production shops I have seen clean the stone and place it under a 100 watt bulb for a bit to eliminate all of the solvent.On goes the super glue and when the glue is believed to have penetrated a shot of accelerator is used.I've seen people do this very quickly and at times repeatedly to the same stone as the different sanding grits reveal more problems.Another great thing is that diamond grinding wheels don't have to be dressed as the old s.c. wheels did.Very nice.there is now such a thing as a 600 grit diamond grinding wheel which is really nice for some stones.Enjoy!