3.75mm - Tom likes 6 grains per stone, but I don't know where his cutoff point is before he drops back to 4 (probably 1mm with some of his work I've seen!). Cutting between the 3 grains with an onglette does define them to the eye, but looks hideous at magnification. The 6 grains was presented as one possible way of removing the metal between the stones.
The channel setting will get better, but it'll take some practice - I've got a clearer idea of what I'm doing now, so can avoid some of the annoying mistakes I made on that.
I think the thing that amuses me most with all that is that apart from the placing holes for the stones, there's no power tool use. It's slow, but precise - and quite relaxing.
As I'm the only one there who owns a microscope (other than Tom), he'll be covering some microscope-specific techniques with me later on; one of those includes bead isolation cuts to make raising the grain easier - is that the cut you mean, or is it the girdle-to-girdle bit you mean? Cutting the bearings with a graver seems to work well on 2mm stones too, so long as the angle of attack is very high - too low and the graver burnishes the bearing wall as well, with all the attendant problems that gives
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The channel setting will get better, but it'll take some practice - I've got a clearer idea of what I'm doing now, so can avoid some of the annoying mistakes I made on that.
I think the thing that amuses me most with all that is that apart from the placing holes for the stones, there's no power tool use. It's slow, but precise - and quite relaxing.
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