I have a question. Although I am a Product Designer by training and spent years doing it before retiring I have a certain issue of carving stone. In working with the various materials as a designer it was easy to have a variety of tools that allowed me to get complex curves done without waves or ripples. I have no problem with almost any lapidary effort I have tried and feel I am very good at those and then comes carving, ah the death of my pride. I have found that the harder the material seems the tools available to work it diminishes. What I find is that in working certain tight radii or a long curving surface I have a problem not developing a certain amount of said waves or ripples. Depending on the length of the piece being worked and having limited movement on some equipment that seems to add to the issue. A good example is the scales of a knife are mostly easy with changes to the grinding unit like removing wheels for freedom of movement. But then enter the finger grooves on the belly and having a Titan grinder lol. I have found the 1" Chinese grinding wheel at Harbor freight works great but at maybe 80 grit leaves a lot of finished work and hell if you hit the knife spine. So then it is dremel or foredom time. I find it would be SO nice if I could even find a 1" version of a nova wheel that would greatly diminish these ripples. Short of that wheel I can but tons of 100 to 600 diamond burrs/points but these are mostly very small and that really is what causes the surface irregularities from my view. How on earth do you keep such consistent surfaces? I assume you could make wooden blocks and Silicon Carbide or Diamond paste the surfaces. Does anyone make an advanced set of nova like wheels in small sizes? Best I have found and they are limited are the diamond pacific nova points and i think the large cylinder or bullets are about 3/8ths. I have always been in awe of carvers on this forum and elsewhere for being able to master these surface challenges.
