Thread: Rouge Blocks (paste question)

Found a gem store that sells lapidary supplies today. They sold several tubes of diamond paste, but none of them had micron sizes on them, only grits.

One was 100,000, one was 50,000. Are either worth my trouble?

My main question was on several colors of Rouge blocks they were selling. None had micron sizes on them, but they were color coded. There was white, red, green, and other colors.

I've seen many strops with a green coating on them. Should one of these blocks of green rouge work, or should I not take a chance on a wrong grit?

The reason they are color coded is because for lapidary work a specific color is for a specific job. The grit doesn't matter. red is for gold polishing and green is for harder metals. They also sell yellow, white, blue and grey. The green should be chromium oxide and is the stuff you would use for razor sharpening.

Roughly half and quarter micron for those grits. As it's diamond it should work well enough. You don't get much in general though and diamond is quite expensive.

By the way if there are colour coded polishes with no grit or micron ratings I'd steer clear or be very wary as some of them have a range of grit sizes in the same material (cheaper for them to make, no doubt).

I've seen lots of manufacturers not listing the particle size or giving average particle size and only sometimes admitting the range of particle size in the same stuff. It might be something like a range of 0.7 to 6 microns with an average of 1 micron.

I think most of the diamond stuff is fairly good.