Scratches From the Master Lap

This column was written for the Lynchburg Gem and Mineral Society. It contains a wealth of information about faceting and especially the Graves faceting machine.

I. Scratches from the Master Lap Dedicated to Bill and Joan Baltzley

This column will be devoted to ideas submitted by members who are stone cutters – from tumblers to faceters. If you have a problem or have solved a cutting problem and care to share your solution, this is your column – please submit your ideas to the editor or myself. The title for the column was suggested by a problem that had me stumped to the point of giving up faceting: it is the topic of the first article.

Observation:

I was just about at my wits’ end: I had to re-cut a pavilion of a large pink Afghanistan topaz a third time to eliminate scratches which seemed to show up for no reason. I replaced my Master Lap with other laps and polish compounds which worked for a while, then the “scratches from hell” returned, ruining my attempts at perfection. (Hence, the name of this series of articles Scratches from the Master Lap!)

Problem:

City water has sediments in it: sand filters…