Re: ATM A question on Metal tool design........

["Bob May" <bobmay@nethere.com>]

The tool will be worn a bit by the coarse grit you start with.  Just make
sure that you do a good wash of the iron between grits (although the next
grit will very quickly work out any of the old grit that may be imbedded in
the iron) and you won't have any problems at all.  Iron tools are the way
that the pros do glass work and while production shops often use one tool
for a size of grit, that's mostly just because they don't want to spend any
time (=money) to clean the iron and the automatic grit feeder/recirculators
between stages and it's faster for them to go to the next spindle to do the
next grit.  I've seen a guy at Stellafane 3 years ago do a 6" mirror in less
than an hour from coarse grind through to ready to polish on a iron tool of
about 3' diameter.  Amazing to watch to say the least!
Don't worry about grain in the iron causing problems, even if you still have
some tooling marks on the iron after the first grit.
Bob May
My new web space address is http://webu.wigloo.com/bobmay/ or
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Bob May