Get a mirror finish from ceramic lap

[Mike Cirelli]

Jim's thread tells how to clean. This may not sound right because it makes the lap look dirty. To get a mirror shine to your gravers almost comparable to the 3m pads. After cleaning turn on the hone with the clean ceramic lap and no diamond sprayed on it. Hold to and grind into the lap a tin (lead) solder (make sure it's not core fluxed) or cerro metal. This will fill in any little surface imperfections. If you want a mirror finish use the 600, 1200, then 100,000 mesh spray. It works well for me. I wasn't satisfied with the finish I was getting just charging with 50,000 mesh spray. If you don't like it Jim's cleaning method should remove any tin charged onto the lap.
I personally love it.
Mike

 

[Mike Cirelli]

I should have said 600 & 1200 diamond grinding wheels then the ceramic with 100,000 spayed on it. 50,000 will work also but you'll get a 50,000 shine which is not bad either.

 

[Mike Cirelli]

This will explain it better than I did.
If you are starting off with a new ceramic lap, prepare it with a small amount of graphite. Put about 1/8 teaspoon of powdered graphite into a spray bottle and fill to the top with alcohol. Shake well and spray on to a rotating lap. Immediately rub the graphite/alcohol mixture into the lap and wipe off as much excess as possible.

Your lap is now ready to receive diamond. While the lap is rotating at a slow speed, spray your diluted diamond mixture on to the lap from about 10 inches away. Take a paper towel and rub the lap to evenly spread the diamond over the lap. You will probably have too much diamond on your lap!

While the lap is running slowly, very carefully place a razor blade at the center of the lap. Press the blade into the lap with a light pressure and slowly move it toward the outside edge of the lap. Be careful, razor blades can be sharp. You still have too much diamond on your lap!

Get a clean facial tissue or paper towel well dampened with alcohol. With the lap rotating, start wiping the center of the lap and slowly move toward the outside edge of the lap. Open up a fresh portion of your tissue, re-wet it, and repeat the process. You are finally ready to start polishing with your new ceramic lap.

Don’t be discouraged if your new ceramic lap is slow in polishing. Ceramic laps can take a long time to break in.

Another technique for setting up ceramic laps is rub tin/lead solder onto the surface of the lap. Make sure that any oxidation on the solder is cleaned off before loading the lap. The oxidation can create a problem with contamination. Also make sure that your solder doesn’t have a flux core, because the flux can cause problems in polishing. The thin tin/lead coating offers some help in reducing the problem of your ceramic lap becoming overloaded with diamond.

A fine pre-polish is a must with ceramic laps. Don’t be surprised if you have to cheat to get your facets to line up on your ceramic laps. Ceramic laps tend to be the truest running laps available, so small inaccuracies in your pre-polish lap will show up when you change over to your ceramic lap for polishing. Some people get around this problem by also using a ceramic lap for their pre-polish.

Keep your lap clean and wipe it down with alcohol before using or changing to a new tier of facets. I have found that best results are obtained with light pressure and slow speed.

If you can’t seem to get the excess diamond off your ceramic lap with alcohol and a razor blade, (or if it gets contaminated) you can clean it off with lava soap.
This is compliments of http://www.facetingmachines.com/ceramic_laps.shtml.

What I have found is that polishing HSS after carbide on the same wheel can mark the HSS.