Sanding mineral inlay?

[Kelvin Burton]

I bought a variety of minerals a couple of years ago at SWAT and until now have only occasionally some some of the synthetic Turquoise with CA glue. I found I could sand that down flush with the wood using 80 grit Abranet sanding disks.

This last week I got adventurous and tried some "Tiger Sand" and that is where the trouble started! This stuff is much harder than the turquoise and I'm killing too many sanding pads trying to get it flush.

What do y'all use? I also tried regular sandpaper disks but they wore out really quick too

Help!!

[Harry Robinette]

Try using a scraper in a dragging motion shear scrape. Then use Vince's Gold disc thats what a friend of mine said he dose with the harder stuff.

[Jim Burr]

I'd stay away from Tiger sand first...much to hard for turning use...just MHO. 80g is your best bet for sanding real turquoise and coral...never had a problem. Fresh bur on a scraper for finish post sanding. Or you could raise grits (number) as you get closer to the parent wood. Tiger sand, depending on the make up and refinement is a lot of silica and really hard!!

[James Roberts]

I looked online for "tiger sand" and could find no info on it so I'm not sure what it is. Aluminum oxide, the abrasive in Abranet and other sand papers is rated as a 9 on the Mohs hardness scale where diamond is 10 and talc is 1. Turquoise is a little under 6 on the scale and can be sanded back somewhat easily by aluminum oxide abrasive papers. If "tiger sand" is closer in hardness to aluminum oxide, like topaz (8)or quartz (7), it will be more difficult to sand. I would try Harry's suggestion of using a scraper and be prepared to glue in some more inlay material if scraping knocks some loose. Hope this helps, good luck.

[Barry Elder]

I have to admit I learned the hard way that it is easier to sand the wood down to the level of the mineral, grit, whatever, than it is to sand hard stuff down to the wood. So now whenever I fill with turquoise or anything else, I keep the filler below the finished surface and work down to it.

[Pat Scott]

The Sanding Glove sells 3M Diamond Discs.

[Kelvin Burton]

Thanks all for your responses. I went and did some more Googling and found that my "Tiger Sand" is most likely what is more commonly known as Tiger Eye. Depending on the site, it is definitely rated harder than most other minerals, one site said 7. That explains why I was having difficulty sanding it!

Harry, Jim & James, I assume you are referring to a turning tool scraper, not one of those flat metal plates some cabinet makes use? I also read that some use carbide tools and I have an EWT rougher with a carbide blade. I'm nervous to try that though.

Barry, I had about come to the same conclusion!

Pat, I'm sure those diamond discs would work great but at $17.95 each ..... and then another $17.85 for 3 more grits to polish it .... might have to wait a while

I guess I'll try and do my research first before I get carried away with another "experiment" (says he bravely!!)

[Thomas Canfield]

A local turner in my new club says that you need to use a diamond hone to shape the turquoise since it is harder than the steel cutting edges and most of the sanding grits. My wife wants me to use some, but I can't talk myself into getting the diamond hones and rasps. Good Lucck. There are several in the local club there that can give you some suggestions.

[Jeremy Leasure]

I use 80 grit hook and loop on a 6" Bosch random orbit that has an aggressive mode setting. This works, but it isn't incredibly fast. I've done turquoise with this method, the only other mineral aside from malachite that I've used so far. My best advice is to take the time to make sure you can get all the pieces of inlay as close to the surface of the wood as you can. The closer you get it, the less pain you'll have leveling it out. After the initial leveling it's just filling in any gaps and sanding as you normally would. I've had a diamond disk in my online cart several times in the past, but it hasn't made it past the last-minute-culling-before-checking-out process to this day.