Thread: Arkansas Adventures...

So I got this 12 x 2.5 x 1 Translucent monster in a lot on Ebay awfully cheap. It's been sitting around for months just for the fact that I haven't had the will power to flatten it. I started to put a hurting on it with my Norton lapping stone (more accurately, it was putting the hurting on me and the lapping stone) and got it maybe %45 flat picking at it a little here and there. But I finally decided to get serious about making this thing usable, at least on one side. Tonight's starting point:



You can see the black sharpie that kind of outlines where the rock is low. Coming in from the corners and a few marks along the length. After about 2 hours working the stone over with 80 grit loose Silicone Carbide:



Thoughts so far - the Insanity workout program has nothing on 3 hours of circles and figure 8s on a translucent Arkansas stone. I'm never doing this again - from now on all my stones come from Dan's. Because Dan's makes them flat. And I'll be danged if I ever get a Arkenrock bigger than 8x3. I really should've gotten the 60 grit SiC. I'm not sure if I'm flattening the stone, or conforming that poor glass shelf to the rock. It now looks like frosted glass.

I spent another hour on the stone before my arms were officially too tired to go on. Those 2 corners have about half as much area as in the last pic. Maybe less.

On the bright side, it's all down hill once the stone is flat. And I only have to do this with one monster Arkie. And a little hard Jnat, but that's a problem for another day. The True Hard I got from Dan's is already flat and just need to be polished to 2K and burnished. I was hoping to have this flat tonight so I could polish the surfaces tomorrow, and have them ready to go to the shop Saturday for buffing. That's looking a little bit less feasible. But maybe I'll have one prepped and ready to go. We'll see what tomorrow brings.