hi I'm Steve Moriarty from Moriarty's Gem Art ( MoreGems.com )and today I'm going to talk to
you a little bit about using the batt lap which is a final polishing lap it has
many uses but I use it to final polish I generally will cut a stone to comparable
to 3000 grit pre polish and from there I'll polish on the batt lap now to use a
batt lap you need to clean it and lubricate it and we do that with wd-40
and a tissue
and after cutting a few facets with the lap you can see how much material has
come off the stone and and this is a problem polishing once it builds up on
here you old your polishing will slow down dramatically so you need to keep it
clean keep a charge regular I charge it with fifty thousand diamond and to do
that once you've cleaned it off you just get your finger a little greasy
dab it in the diamond and just spread it across the lap and now it's ready to
polish this laps good for many stones you know I'm working on a tanzanite at
the moment it works on garnet tourmaline most of the harder stone sapphire spinel
I don't do quartz on this I don't do opals on this
it's worth trying for almost any stone I've recently had a situation where I
went back to my tin lap just because a tourmaline was very slow on this lap and
for some reason the tin lab polished that particular stone quicker but most
stones I followed find that this lap works very well it's harder than the tin
lap so it produces a little bit flatter facet and and it in general cuts faster
but you know if you have an issue with a stone you just try something else and
and until you find out what works I generally run at a medium speed it's
probably between 300 and 600 rpms with this and you can change the speed change
the direction you polish all these things can can vary the speed and
quality of your polish so you just keep working with it and eventually you find
a direction you know you can work with the lab against the lap and all these
things affect how it polishes and in each stones different and each facet can
be different so you just keep working with it working different ways with it
and until you get a Polish usually after four or five facets or a row of facets
I'll recharge the lab you can tell when it's getting slow
just give it a recharge and and it'll you know polish very fast again the give
you a little demonstration of how to work with the batt lap this is a
tanzanite we're also doing a demonstration with
and generally move it across you know I generally do about a one inch
working and working quickly across the lap you know then when you take a look
at it if it is liney or you see lines in it you can move to the opposite side
of the lap this will change the direction that your polishing sometimes
I sweep across the middle you know you'll you'll find that every
facet can react differently so the direction you're polishing can can help
the speed you're polishing you know of course faster will polish quicker
sometimes it works better to produce a flatter facet without lines sometimes it
doesn't work as well you know those times I was deciding to work over here
and go back and forth there's so many different things that you can do that
change how that that facet gets polished you know right now I've got little dots
in it so it's got to go further
you know it's always important to be able to see the facet exactly I find
that a lot of faceters when they get started they really don't see how the
quality of their polish is you really got to work to get the light right and
getting the light right is moving it back and forth between where the facet
up here is dark and the facet appears light and you can see the little dots of
this case
so because I cut the in the two steps I go for my rate at 325 new bond lap to
polish it takes me a little while longer if I went one further step and we cut
everything on on a little finer grit they probably wouldn't take me so long
to polish but I also skip one entire step
you you're probably gonna wanna polish from at least 3000 grit on a metal metal
lap because these great tech laps that I'm using I don't I think they've quit
making them which is unfortunate because I'm gonna have to change how I polish
or I should say how I cut
so try and get used to the amount of time that you think it takes the Polish
a passive the bigger the passive the longer it's going to take but I often
count you know that each time you look at it you lose time so you don't want to
over polish but that takes a lot to over polish so you want to leave it down as
much as possible and look as few times as possible
so as black as this is getting it's probably time to clean off
the batt lap
you slow it down a little bit so it doesn't throw everything off speed it
back up and you'll find your polish
if it seems awfully slow try go on the other side
we're actually reversing the direction method the lap is going into the stone
and it can change the speed of polish significantly what I'm talking about the
difference between light and dark is that that transition between
right reflection to a darker question is where you're going to see the fast at
your best and you can see the sea passages
it does have good polish it's smooth no dots
so if you have any questions or comments about using the batt lap please leave
them in the comment section below and I'm Steve Moriarty from MoreGems.com
online and Moriarty's gem art on the square in Crown Point, IN.