Bespoke Drinks Coasters

[Lee Roberts]

>It took some will power to finish it

Tell me about it. Here's the finishing routine I went through:

1. Wet sand out the edge machining marks and roundover transitions - P180, P320, P600
2. Wet sand the resin back flush to the tops - P180
3. Wet sand the tops - P240, P320, P400, P600, P1200
4. Maroon Scotchbrite edges
5. Grey Scotchbrite edges and tops
6. Polish tops and edges.

Everything by hand. All 125 of 'em... (I did try out a random orbital sander with an interface pad. A non-starter. In practice it was very awkward to use on items of this size which needed a smooth transition into the edge. Regardless - the quality of finish when doing it by hand was orders of magnitude better.)

The material starts out quite grey and gets darker as you polish it. Consistency was important, so I ended up using a phone app interval timer which would count-down the sanding stage and then give me 20 seconds or so to select the next coaster before repeating.



Heh. All good fun..!

Wal.

How did you pick up the job Wal, packaging looks just as sophisticated as the products!