Thanks for further replies. As I now have about 5 million (× 10-6
orders for this shiny thing I'm making, it's been worth making some systematic experiments based on the info in this thread and in other places.
My aim was to polish the faces of two inch diameter brass discs as quickly as possible. I tried various methods – going through the grades of wet'n'dry on plate glass followed by tripoli and the blue compound on machine driven mops, going through the belts on a linisher, Autotosol on a mop at various stages etc etc – I tried many permutations.
It turned out (to my surprise) that I could take machining marks out in less than a minute per face using an A6 (roughly P2000) Trizact belt on the linisher without going through the grades – the belt was already on the machine,and laziness was the mother of this discovery for sure. Trizacts cut fast and don't seem to clog at all.
From there, Autosol on a machine driven G-type loose-leaf cotton mop gave about the same finish as Tripoli/blue compounds, on their individual G mops , but much faster. I had assumed that aggressive and coarse went together, but not so.
Final hand polishing with 2, 1, 0.5, 0.25 micron diamond pastes gives a specular surface – but if a fly coughs on it….
Rob.
Edited By Robin Graham on 04/10/2016 23:23:56