The Daily Grind

I know I have been a little quiet recently so, I thought I'd share what has been keeping me busy. As many of you know I am coming to the end of my degree, in fact I only have a week to go until hand in for my final assessments so im very busy at the grind stone. literally



The pieces I am making have facets cut into them which then have to be ground and polished until they are back to their gorgeous glossy glassyness. To polish glass is a many stage process, firstly the cut pieces are worked on grinding wheels with very coarse grit. From there its hand lapping time (pictured above) where you use progressively finer grits, with water on a piece of float glass and grind the glass by hand.



It is as time consuming as it sounds, between each stage the pieces are marked with a permanent marker so that I can make sure none of the surface has been missed, corners can be particularly devious especially on the finer grits and sometimes I wonder if they are trying to deliberatley escape lol. Once all the hand lapping is done its onto the polishing machines, first with pumice then with cerium until hours later, finally, its done. And sometimes its all worth it



The piece above is one of 5 that make a group, they rely on the reflections and refractions of the pattern (there is actually only 1 pattern in there the other 2 are refractions) and the grouping, to convey their meaning. I'll take a picture when they are all done ..some time next weekend, until then I hope you found that interesting. I hope to be back with some beads before the next bank holiday :o)