In Tom Herbst’s books he uniformly recommends using NuBond 1200 laps for pre polish. I understand that using a 3000 grit diamond should be approximately equivalent, but many people (including Tom Herbst) have said the NuBond will actually produce a better pre polish.
Now that NuBond is no longer being made is there a generally accepted alternative besides 3000 grit diamond?
Everything about them seems super easy and nice, and the cost of a sintered 3000 grit diamond lap is pretty high, so any advice would be greatly appreciated.
battlap and 3000 diamond?suppose to be good. have 2 usable sides so you can use the other side with a finishing compound. I just received mine and will test it out in a few days. I used d, lite 1200 up to now as my pre polish lap. got nothing bad to say about that one. very easy to use
I ordered a sampling of these from graves last year and they called it a B/O that never materialized. Lasco diamond powder on Corian and Copper with 3000 - 8000 - 14000 has me asking for a 5000 - like you looking to get a better prepolish than 3K.
I think I am going to go with D’Lite Topper 1200, D’Lite Topper 3000, and the Gearloose Lap & Polish Starter kit (Zinc+ with 8,000 PCD diamond, Tin+ Laminate with 100,000 PCD diamond. Matrix Ceramic, and 4-type Oxide crayons). I also might get a Greenway and a Darkside.
Yeah, I ended up going with a zinc and/or copper copper with 3000 pcd diamond, and then the gearloose high performance starter set with a zinc+ with 8k pcd, a batt lap for 60k pcd, and a darkside with the four oxide batt stick set. I also picked up their matrix and 100k pcd diamond, just in case I want to try some super polishing.
I really want the greenway and creamway, and the D’lite laps, both the cutting and impregnated alumina and oxide laps, but for now I will focus on hand applied compounds for the experience, before going to pre-applied for ease of use.
I tried contacting D’lite through their website. All orders I made were automatically rejected, and when I tried to call their customer service line I was redirected to an answering service without ever even being giving the name of the company I was contacting.
Absolutely atrocious customer service, and their website is apparently unusable for ordering. So until a better alternative arrives I cannot recommend even dealing with the D’lite people at all.
Someone mentioned directly emailing them, but in the modern era that is like asking me to write them a physical letter and drop it in the mail in order to get service.
Update:
Marsh from Lighting Laps has contacted me and is attempting to solve the problem with his credit card processing company rejecting certain overseas cards.
He also gave me a list of suppliers in the US I can try to order from directly, but so far none of them ship outside the Continental 48.
He has said he would be willing to produce a Paypal invoice that I can pay using any method I wish, so it looks like he is very much trying to supply good customer service no matter what.
I hope he can find a new credit card processing company, and perhaps consider using Amazon Payment, since in my experience they always work every time no matter what.
But the real test will be when the laps get here, because all that really matters is that they do a good job, and so far all of the reviews of his products have been excellent. It is a shame that small enterprises have so many hurdles put in place just to simply do business.
So apparently, rockpeddler.com will not ship outside the Continental US 48, which means American citizens in Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, and anywhere else are out of luck. As well as any Canadians who wish to purchase from them.
But kingsleynorth.com seems to be willing to ship anywhere in the world, which is how I like to do business! So I placed a purchase with them for D’lite 1200 grit and 3000 grit laps.
I buy a lot of rough from Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand, so I am a bit sensitive when North American centric payment procedures rear their ugly head.
I thank Marsh again for resolving this problem. I have created an account with Kingsley North, and plan on purchasing more from them in the near future.
I will let you know how the D’lite laps compare to the NuBond 1200.
, since in my experience they always work every time no matter what.