so far I've only turned the turquoise, malachite and red jasper. But I ordered more as soon as I turned them.
First, they feel like expensive blanks SHOULD feel.. heavy, dense, solid and consistent.
They feel substantial.. they feel real. and they're even the correct size..
(square, so you can mount them in a chuck on the lathe)
As others said, sharp tools, light cuts.
But I used some fairly heavy cuts. I don't think I used anything but a roughing gouge.
Might have used a mini skew on the ends of one or two .. but I don't even think
I did that. The sides of the roughing gouge acted as a scraper anyway.
They cut cleanly, no chattering, no 'skitching'
(you know .. when you're scraping an acrylic and you hear this gawd-awful
noise that sounds like "SKITCH" and you KNOW you just took out a big chunk
of material .. probably shouldn't have sneezed while turning..)
Polish like a dream. I sand to 600 and then wet sand with micromesh to
12,000. I might or might not hit it with White Diamond, maybe Brasso or
Novus2 plastic polish. I usually put on some Ren wax to keep the fingerprints
at bay. But finishing is real easy, real fast and really really good.
I love this stuff.
ps . I'm still a beginner, so these aren't great. But the material makes it easy to
get better very quickly.