So goes the popular saying and I’m willing to believe it, because I am incurably addicted to wasting money on all manner of novelty abrasives.
What caught my eye was something called Mini Super Stone, which turned out to be a tiny rod of ceramic /resin composite, rather like a pencil lead but colour coded for hardness, to be used for removing small blemishes.
These are meant to be held in what was described as a special holder, but was in fact no more than a Pentel clutch pencil, without the usual leads. What I had thought of as a small tube of refills was just one expensive 0.9mm rod, 5cm long. All this was compounded by the fact that it was sent out in so fat a tube inside a bag, that it qualified as a large letter, much inflating the VAT of course.
Still, having acquired all this information, I scoured the web and found this dedicated site, with even more goodies and more reasonable prices. The Super Stones which come in endless shapes and presentations can be mounted in an ultrasonic hand piece, for best effect. So if you are like me you will be making a wish list of all this fascinating stuff, while the In-laws are sipping their sherry.
Well I'm not sure yet Caroline, as it's only just arrived. I'm hoping that it might deal with the odd stray bit of solder, that ends up in the wrong place. Dennis.
On the ultrasonic handpieces, I've heard that they aren't great at cleaning up castings as the material removal rate is very slow.
As for the stones - yes, they're good. As Dennis says, the holders are bog-standard mechanical pencils; I think mine are 0.7 rather than 0.9. The stones themselves are very effective at cleaning in little nooks & crannies (internal corners, for example), don't seem to wear very quickly and working through the grits gets to the same sort of finish I'd expect from Water of Ayr.
Thanks Peter, I expect I could rake out my water of Ayr stones, haven't used them in a long time. I'm sure I read on the other forum a while back that you can no longer buy them?
On another point, the new Durston domed planishing set. I left a message on their FB page for spec which ended up with emails to Matthew their MD. First he sent me a leaflet for the wrong equipment, then he sent measurements for 6 stakes, so I reminded him there were 13, apparently that was the wrong set too, he says he is now off until the 6th was there a hurry? Also asked about the stake holder, which cookies don't sell and asked for price but he's just ignored it even though you'd have to buy that from them. He's hopeless :/
I keep saying it's time I went up to Bridge of Stair... My understanding is the quarry is shut down and there's no more WoA or Tam O'Shanter being quarried (I'm told by some straight razor enthusiasts there is a difference between them). I've got a few, I've not got around to trying a Shah stone as an alternative.
Checked my superstones - I have 300, 800 and 2400 grit (not sure which grit system offhand!) and they're definitely 0.7mm pencils; nothing more than cheap Pentel ones; I'm fairly sure I bought mine from Moleroda. In use, they're similar to the fibreglass sticks Cooksons sell.
The Durstons thing surprises me, that's not the rep they have for customer service. I'd probably only want one for 6" dia forms initially.
That reminds me - it's time I forged a decent horse for stake holding.
There’s One Born Every Minute.
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Originally Posted by CJ57
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