How to Polish Stones
- 1). The first thing you want to do when you get your stones home is of course clean all the dirt and debris off them. You can simply put all the rocks in a bucket of hot soapy water and let them soak; then rinse them off.
- 2). After the stones have been clean; select the stone that you wish to polish first. I recommend picking the softest and smallest stone for the first time. As it's obviously much quicker and once you see the final results, it will entice you to continue with this hobby.
- 3). Take the 60 grit sandpaper and rub it around the stone to shape it. If you are going for a nice round stone start at the corners and rub them down evenly. Periodically, dip the stone into your bucket of water to keep the stone wet. Once you have your stone shaped in the shape in which you want; proceed to the next step.
- 4). At this point you will notice that your stone is shaped correctly. But, the rock is severely scratched all over. The next few steps involve removing all the scratches and smoothing out the stone.
- 5). Dip the stone in the water again. Now use the 160 grit of paper and rub over the scratches the coarser paper left behind. You will notice that this grit of paper will still scratch the stone but will smoothen the larger scratches on the rock surface. Remember to keep the stone wet and dip in the bucket periodically. When all the larger scratches have been removed; proceed to the next step.
- 6). Now you should be holding in your hand a stone with smaller scratches. Take the 360 grit and continue rubbing your stone. Like the previous step you want to further smoothen the stone. This process will still leave small scratches but again will smoothen the rock surface even further. Continue to rinse off the rock periodically, when all scratches from the previous sanding have been smoothed over; proceed to next step.
- 7). You are almost done. You should now be holding a stone that is pretty smooth to the touch. By this point you are probably impressed by how the stone looks compared to when you first picked it up. The last step is to take the powdered polish and apply onto a damp denim cloth. You don't have to put a whole lot of polish on the cloth. Start Polishing the stone with the denim until you have achieved your desired result.
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