mary, allan, what machine are you using? i teach faceting, been cutting for 53 yrs as a hobby and demo’d shows, and worked for crystalite in 70’s. i use only metal bonded(plated) diamond wheels since they came out in late 60’s. we use what ever grit will get to our basic pre faceted stone, ready for pre-polish and truing of facets. i have 1200,1500,3000, but have them use the 1200 for best results on larger stones and the other 2 grits for tiny stones. i have stacks of all kinds of different type polishing laps which we no longer use. we use basically one lap– the TIN lap. AND i NEVER EVER recommend scoring a polishing lap, bad news. we cut with fast speeds and plenty enough water but when it comes to polishing– the exact opposite. we use the tin at VERY slow speed and use 50,000 diamond powder as polish. extremely slow drip of water. you want to make a slur/mud of the diamond on the lap and not sling the polishing agent off with speed. one, a 15 mm stone, it only takes 5 or so seconds to polish perfectly a facet from a 1200 grit lap. i had a friend just buy an ultra tec and had been faseting a few yrs ago on a graves. when i had him try this polishing method he was shocked how fast he was polishing his stones. think about it and if your machine has variable speed give it a try. it will do 90+ % of your stones. i have crystalites tin lap but bought 2 batt tin laps they work great with diamond powder. the powder can be bought fairly cheap from china and only takes a little on the end of your finge to polish many facets. gemmakermz@cs.com