Bob;

Thanks for the info! That may be the "magic" technique I've been
looking for. I wasn't familiar with the flat lap-style of buffing
wheel. The Gesswein company also has a lot of other interesting buffing
and polishing tools. I should have looked into the whole jewelry-making
area.

The 8" flat lap wheels may be fine for the size of my parts, which are
generally under 3" on a side. I can see setting up 3 or 4 of these
wheels with different grits and moving the parts up through the
sequence.

Thanks again, this opens up a whole new approach!

Bruce Johnson
Johnson's Extremely Strange Musical Instrument Co.
Burbank, CA




Bob wrote:
You might check into a jeweler's flat lap -- it's a machine designed
specifically to polish and buff flat surfaces. The only issue might be
finding a lap big enough to take your pieces -- the typical bench-top
lap has a 6 or 8 inch diameter disk, so the size that you can work on
is limited.

A lap's polishing wheel is a hard felt tapered edge disk, cut with
several slots. You hold the work underneath so you can see what you
are doing -- the rotation causes the slots to make the disk
"transparent", so you can see through it.

Generally, they are used for polishing and buffing after the work is
already sanded to about 600 grit. You could maybe use one for sanding
by using a coarser grit compound on the disk, but I've never tried it
that way. You can certainly polish and buff flats without compromising
the surface, though.

Here's a picture of one:
http://www.gesswein.com/catalog/cata...TOKEN=32490561

Regards,

Bob