Welcome to the shop everybody!
What you're looking at here's, well, it's half a thunderegg.
And, if you've gotten into rockhounding, maybe you've also either
purchased a lapidary saw or you're using a tile saw. Like I have a Rigid
brand tile saw. People like to use the ones from Harbor Freight as well.
So you've probably cut some, cut some of your rocks up and
You like what you see, but it's still pretty rough. You can see all of those cut marks from your saw.
And lapidary equipment is pretty expensive. I mean, a cabbing machine is pricey. A flat lapping machine is pricey.
So, in today's video I wanted to share with you a way I like to put a polish on things
and do it in a very cheap and affordable way.
So, here is the other half of this thunderegg.
So, it's got a nice polish to it.
You can see it catch the light, really shows it off. You can see right here,
there's a little piece that is not polished.
So, sometimes when you're cutting they'll break off. I didn't feel like grinding all of that down.
So,
you get a little, a little dull spot right there, but
You can accomplish this with some basic tools and a pretty affordable set of polishing pads.
So, let me show you what we have here. And uh,
this right here is a velcro adapter.
It's, this one right here is threaded for 5/8.
And you have all of these pads. Let's get this out of the way here.
We have all of these pads that go from a 50 grit,
I got 100
200
400
800
1500
and a 3,000 pad.
So the way these work is this is going to stick just like that.
You can see all the, all the dust there. It's just gonna stick on that just like that.
Um,
this is rated for 12,000 rpm.
I don't know if it's going to show up there on the camera. 12,000 rpm. I don't like to run it like that.
Uh you know, you can run this on an angle grinder.
Uh, which most people can access an angle grinder just like this guy right here.
Um you know, you can pick one up at Harbor Freight. This one just so happens to be a Dewalt.
But, with an adapter,
like this, this little adapter right here, they come in a couple of different sizes,
just threads in here and now
you can chuck it up in a drill,
or, like my favorite, I'm going to be using my drill press.
So, I'll also, I'm going to put links down in the description box to where you can buy these on Amazon.
So, if you're interested in them, you can pick them up.
But uh yeah, you know, they're pretty flexible as well.
So, if you wanted to use your angle grinder on a rock kind of like this and go over it outside. That's great.
But, I would suggest not necessarily using your angle grinder
while trying to hold these smaller rocks.
So...
Let's, uh, move over to where I'll get this set up and we will...
Probably, I think what we'll do is we'll polish this.
So, this is cut out of the middle of a rock and that way you can polish it.
I'll show you kind of what those steps look like and uh,
the other side is rough, so it'll be a nice contrast.
Here's how we'll be doing this: I'm gonna have this chucked up in the drill press,
and as you can see I got the shopvac hooked up as well.
So, if you're gonna do this inside,
definitely have a setup like this. I just have the shopvac hose mounted with some zip ties
to the little arm that normally gets the table so all the dust gets sucked up.
Normally I would have a safety third attitude about things but
you definitely don't want to be breathing this stuff in.
So either do it outside and maybe have like a fan blowing over you,
or have a, have a dust mask, that type of thing.
But I'm gonna throw this into a hyperlapse and uh
polish up that stone that I was just showing you.
[soft music]
So I got one stage left, which is uh the 3000 grit.
It's the white one right here.
So, if you're not
100% sure, as to how something takes a polish
essentially what you're doing is you're progressively taking out the scratches from the coarser pad.
Excuse me.
Yeah, so when you sand something at a 200,
then you move up to the 400, you're mostly just looking to take out the scratches.
So, as you go from a 50 grit up to a 3000 grit
you have to spend less and less time at the higher grits.
Also, this is loud. Again, I got the shopvac, I got the drill press running.
This is set up for about 2000 rpm which seems to work pretty well.
So yeah, let me fire this up. I'll uh finish this polish and we will head over to the bench.
[loud machine and vacuum noise]
So this is the rough cut side of the rock that you just saw me polish.
Nothing too impressive but let's flip it over.
That's what we ended up with. You can see my LED light up there.
Quite the contrast right? Oh, water on my gloves still. Quite the contrast.
So: is this the same as a cabbing machine? Not at all.
But, if you have a drill, an angle grinder, a drill press, one of those
you can turn your rough cut stone that comes off of any tile saw, this was cut tile saw,
and actually see what it looks like on the inside, in all its glory for about 40 bucks.
Uh, I just looked I think these were 35 for the pads and adapter was
5 or 6 dollars or so?
I mean, I'm gonna put a link down there, but the prices of these things they fluctuate a little bit but
it's hard to, hard to beat that for the money.
Um, so I wanted to share my process that I'm polishing flat stones with.
If you like this type of video, please hit the subscribe button, hit that notification bell.
I appreciate the views. You know, I like to get out and share my love of rockhounding with others.
So, hope you liked it. Have a good day!
[soft music]