Arnaud's diamond powder

[Sam]

I ordered some .5 micron diamond powder and it arrived yesterday. I applied some to a leather pad and and used it to polish my carbide burnisher and it worked REALLY well. The diamond application is heavier than with diamond spray. The black areas show where I polished my burnisher and it's much blacker than when I use diamond spray, which tells me it's much more efficient and is polishing faster (because of more diamond particles on the leather). I will test on my cast iron lap next.

Thanks for the info on this Arnaud!

 

[Sam]

Here's my burnisher.

 

[Arnaud Van Tilburgh]

Thanks Sam for letting us know. The packages I bought in Antwerp, they are different grid. You say yours is .5 micron, I do not know what is mine.
But I do know there is a difference in grid depending on the purpose of diamond process.
When I was age 14 working in the diamond sector, I made diamond powder for the boss during my free hours at home by using a " steel stamping tool" you had to unscrew to put in some small diamond particles.

My boss teacher told me I had to use the copper hammer and hit the stamper for 850 times.
I thought I was clever, looking at the diamond dust (boort) after I stamped it only 500 times I thought it would be enough.
The father of my diamond cleaving teacher used it for his diamond lapidary workplace and the boort wasn't stamped enough he found out when polishing his diamonds.
Not only was it a problem the it didn't plisch the diamonds as it should, also the iron cast laps had to be reloaded.
Yes shame on me.

But I learned from it that there is a difference in grid for boort. (diamond powder)

arnaud

 

[Sam]

I bought .5 micron because the diamond spray with the green label is .5 and I know that works for polishing my gravers. I've never tried other grits but I probably should.

So I just tried it on a freshly cleaned cast iron lap and it polished my C-max graver like a piece of glass. Perfect! I agree that this is much better than the diamond spray because you can get a heavier application of diamond powder than with the spray.

That's an interesting story about making diamond powder for your old boss

 

[Barry Lee Hands]

I must have missed the first post, where can this be bought?

 

[mrthe]

Barry i had see it in Ebay for around 10/20 $ ( search for diamond powder ) but if you check in a lapidary store you will find it too .

 

[Southtexas]

okay, in that case

 

[Ste82]

I'm using 0,5 micron diamond powder by more than one year now, and im very happy with it. I wet my finger with alchool and then i slightly touch the powder, after this i rub the finger on a piece of learher...and thats all.
I dont know price because i have steal it from my father bench! (He is a lapidary...).
Stefano

 

[Arnaud Van Tilburgh]

inexpensive here... scroll down the page. Here they list it by grit not by micron size. I usually get the 14k grit for my own use. I do not know offhand how grit compares to micron size.
http://www.amlap.com/alw/page18.html
found a conversion chart for grit/micron here http://www.rocksandgems.info/faceting_how_to/grit_mesh_micron.shtml

Let me add that 5 carat is 1 gram. so this is really inexpensive.

The one I bought in Antwerp is packet in a small paper, just the powder, and it costs 2$ a carat. I thought that was already cheap.

arnaud

 

[mrthe]

inexpensive or expensive?
in ebay you can find 25 ct for 25$
http://bit.ly/1dZw7pA

 

[Sam]

Barry: Here's a link. I bought 10ct to test and then bought 100 ct more. The seller has them in different lots.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/10-Carats-E...439?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2a2e7084f7

 

[Barry Lee Hands]

thank you Sam.

 

[a.khaksari]

Good info! Thank you very much!
I also use this powder for buffing inside the Gun Barrel!

 

[Willem Parel]

I ordered just some at Diamlou Arnaud, it cost only € 0.95per carat. ( one was €1.00)
They had four different sorts, I ordered immediatly 10 carat of each
I haven't recieved it yet but looking forward to it.

I see in Sam's link to Ebay it's cheaper but hey what are the cost anyway.

 

[Sandy]

Sam,
Just ordered some. the 10 carat sale ended by the time I got around to it. Hope I got the right stuff. 50 carats Elgin diamond polishing powder 1/2 micron, 28,000 grit.

Sandy

 

[Marrinan]

Well I just bought five 10 carat vials for $18 plus $5 shipping-better order a cast iron lap now.. Fred

 

[Gemsetterchris]

I'm not ordering any
I can get mirror shine in seconds with my yellow ceragloss wheel.

 

[Arnaud Van Tilburgh]

Yes Chris that works great too and fast.
However, if you ever try diamond powder on a leather lap to polish micro pave beads instead of the buffer wheel, you will be amazed how much faster this works and you don't have the greasy of the polishing block into the cuts and fingers. You won't even need special polish block for platinum, Ti or whatever.
Polishing by hand isn't that much done anymore, but sure it works fast and more precisely.

Sometimes when I see micro pave setting that has high raised beads, after it was polished the beads where lowered that much that il just looked like it was wear for years and then polished again.

More control when done by hand anyway
arnaud

 

[Gemsetterchris]

Dammit Arnaud
You are tempting me to try.
I guess I'll have to now..

 

[Arnaud Van Tilburgh]

Barry: Here's a link. I bought 10ct to test and then bought 100 ct more. The seller has them in different lots.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/10-Carats-E...439?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2a2e7084f7

Sam, are you gonna polish your car as you ordered 100 carat? :biggrin:

arnaud