She comes in colors!

Some might think it's amazing the number of questions we get regarding the color coding of diamond tools, but when you consider the sheer number of tools on the market and crazy color combinations they come in, it's really no surprise. It truly is a rainbow of color combinations and depending on what type of tool you are using and who manufactures it, the colors can range all over the place.

I'll try to give you a brief breakdown of colors according the different manufacturers and their products. Probably the most numerous product selection we have is from 3M. Their color code for their electroplated diamond products like their disks, hand pads and EverRun bands follows like this:
The green color is a 250 µ or roughly a 60 grit diamond

The black color is a 125 µ or roughly a 120 grit diamond

The red color is a 74 µ or roughly a 200 grit diamond

The yellow color is a 40 µ or roughly a 400 grit diamond

The white color is a 20 µ or roughly an 800 grit diamond

The blue color is a 10 µ or roughly an 1800 grit diamond

Now this only applies to the electroplated diamond material from 3M. All the other diamond materials from 3M have a completely different color range for the grit desginations, but these are the main diamond tools that we currently carry from 3M, so it will fit across the range.


Once we move to the newer diamond materials from 3M such as the electrostatic diamond tools, including the disks, belts, and EverRun bands the color range changes. The electrostatic diamond material has a much lighter color palette to indicate the fact that it is not as aggressive or rough as the more primary colored electroplated diamond tools. The 675L electrostatic diamond tools will actually leave a finer surface grind for the same diamond grit as an electroplated tool, so the coloring difference makes quite a bit of sense actually.

The more orange colored material is a 125 µ or roughly a 120 grit diamond

The blue/green color is a 74 µ or roughly a 200 grit diamond

The yellow color is a 45 µ or roughly a 300 grit diamond

The light green color is a 30 µ or roughly a 400 grit diamond

The tan color is a 20 µ or roughly a 600 grit diamond.


This covers most of the 3M diamond tools that we carry as stock items. Once we move to our own diamond smoothing material, you get to learn a whole new set of colors for resin bonded diamond material in disks, belts, velcro backed disks and wheels. There are a number of different manufacturers of resin diamond material out there and most of them (ourselves included) try to follow a standard set of colors for the diamond grit in the resin bond diamond material. There are a few manufacturers out there who just color there materials whatever they please and this can be rather confusing. If you purchase your resin bonded diamond material through us though, they will always follow this color range:

The black colored material is a 100 grit resin bonded diamond

The purple material is a 220 grit resin bonded diamond

The maroon/brown material is a 325 grit resin bonded diamond

The cherry red material is a 600 grit resin bonded diamond

The sky blue material is a 1200 grit resin bonded diamond


We will often get customers who confuse the maroon/brown 325 grit material for a red color, but the true red of the 600 grit material is a very bright cherry red and is easily noticeable as red.
These diamond materials are all different and perform different duties on your glass, so it pays to be informed as to how to tell the difference both in material and color to efficiently utilize and order the correct tools for your work.

A little goes a long way

If you haven't heard of CERF (the Craft Emergency Relief Fund), then now is a good time to look into what they do. CERF assists artists and craftspeople in developing their business and sustaining themselves in the craft. They also assist with disaster relief for artists hard hit by natural disasters such as fires, hurricanes, floods and the like.

Recently we have established a way for everyone to help their fellow craftspeople by helping CERF. If you've purchased anything from our website in the last few months, you may have noticed a new addition to the checkout process. When you confirm your order and before you submit it, we now offer you the chance to round up your estimated order amount to the nearest whole dollar and donate that change to CERF for their ongoing efforts in the arts and crafts community.

The service is provided by an organization called Change Round Up that does an excellent job of making a little contribution go a long way. It's the ultimate example of how something small, when joined together with lots of other small donation, can really add up to make quite a difference. The next time you place an order, think about donating those extra cents via Change Round Up to CERF and make a difference in another artist's life. You can even submit a larger donation if you wish.

A little can truly go a long way.

3M EverRun Bands

So we've been carrying and offering the 3M EverRun bands for a number of years now and they've been a roaring success with everyone who has used them. The one question that we always get though is "How do I move beyond the 800 grit?"


For the most part, we haven't had a great answer for that. We normally tell people to give the shaped smoothing tools in the Square shape a try and use that. Those have worked well for most people, but they aren't the same feel and don't behave quite the same as the EverRun bands, so it kind of threw some people off.

Well, with the advent of the new electrostatic diamond material from 3M last year, we've been able to play around with a number of different uses for this material. Once we made some 4 inch velcro backed disks out of the 675 material for a customer who needed to clean up a surface from the electroplated disk, we discovered that the 675L material is an excellent way to give a clean easy pre-polish surface to glass surfaces ground with the normal electroplated diamonds.

From that realization we were able to create with 3M the same 1/2 inch diamond band as the EverRun diamond bands but with the 675L electrostatic diamond material instead. Now we can offer a fantastic way to move from the rougher electroplated EverRun diamond bands to a much finer electrostatic EverRun diamond band to give a clean easy pre-polish finish to work from. These new EverRun Diamond Finishing bands should close the gap from rough grind to final polish for the 1/2 inch diamond bands that everyone has been looking for.


We're hoping to be able to also formulate and test some cerium impregnated bands with 3M that will complete the entire flow from rough grind to final polish with the EverRun bands. We'll keep you posted on that one. In the meantime, check out the EverRun Diamond Finishing bands and see for yourself how they'll improve your finishing work.

3M Cerium impregnated Trizact material

So, if you're familiar with 3M's trizact material you'll know that it's an embedded alumina oxide material that has the abrasive encapsulated into tiny little pyramids of grit. These pyramids do an excellent job of focusing the grit on the material and cutting at a nice rate with nice surface results on your glass.

Never one to rest on their laurels, 3M has taken this same technology and instead of creating pyramids of alumina oxide, they instead used cerium oxide. The 3M 572LA Trizact material is therefore a cerium impregnated polishing material that requires nothing but water to achieve a quick, bright, fantastic polish on your glass.

We've been testing the material for over a year now and are very impressed with the results. We've even sold our large felt polishing wheel and have moved to polishing just with the 3M cerium impregnated 4 x 106 inch belt on our Somaca. It's that good.

We've taken the material and utilized in various forms now. We have the aforementioned belts in 6 x 2-1/2 and 8 x 3 for the expanding drums, 3 x 41-1/2 for the tabletop wet belt sanders and 4 x 106 for the larger upright belt sanders. We also have the material available in velcro backed 4 inch and 5 inch diameter disk for use with right angle grinders for your final polish on cast work. We've even made cerium hand pads out of the material so you can move your work to a final polish by hand with no machines required (how cool is that!). We even have replaced our 1 inch felt disks in our smoothing disk kits with 6 of the cerium impregnated disks. No more messy slurries, no more wondering if you're using too little or too much cerium to polish your work. Just put this material on your machine, add water and polish.