Re: ATM tile tool questions

[Anthony Stillman <atmer@flash.net>]

Les,



>The problems are:
>1) how do you get the rubber pieces off of the tile after seperating
>   the tiles.


I've never seperated the tile.  I've always just glued the tile onto the
substrait.  These days with  4to1 or 2to1 epoxy.  When I do pull off the
rubber seperators at the edge I use my finger nails, though sometimes its
the other way around.  When my brain was working onece, I found a pair of
pliers, thank g-d that doesn't happen too often.


>2) my epoxy is still sticky 3 days after mixing it

Weak is bad. Tile could come off   Sticky is good.  Grit that can't be
toothbrushed out of the grooves stays put.


>3) with the center of the tiles offset from the center of the tool
>   should I put half tiles on one edge, and how do you cut tiles.

I'm not sure what you mean here.  I don't worry about offsetting tile
facits, only pitch facits when polishing.  Grinding is a very crude process.

As for cutting tile,  a tile snip.  It looks kind of like the pliers
dentists use to pull teeth, only bigger.  They run, in the US, $10 to $20
dollars.  I advise against getting a cheap pair, from experience, but if
you only plan on a couple of mirrors...


>do the 18" blank

You might want to consider a sub-diameter tool or building a simple
machine.  Unless you have arms of steel, and a back to match.

I know a couple of people who had no trouble with 16" full sized tools for
both grinding and polishing.  Personally, I'm not sure I will even do
another 12.5" by hand.


Anthony