Equipment appreciation: diamond belt sander
Sanding the edges of a Heart Stud after it has been cut at the waterjet
If you’ve been following Broken Plates, you might be familiar with our process of using a waterjet to cut out our glass shapes. And if you aren’t familiar, see this post for more details on the process. After the glass gets cut out at the waterjet, the edges are very rough and we must sand them smooth before we fire polish them in our kiln. In order to sand the edges, we use a small belt sander with diamond coated belts combined with a water feed to ensure the glass doesn’t get too hot and crack.
As you can see and/or could probably imagine, we have a lot of very small pieces of glass to sand which sometimes means we have to get our fingers very close to the belt. Sometimes we even wrap our fingertips in electrical tape for protection!
It’s all worth it though in order to create our innovative contemporary glass jewelry that is perfect for special occasions or everyday wear!
