yes, alan, it is harder do to it alloy, i learned about it here on the faseters guild, i have been using the crystalite tin laps for year and its tin is a little softer. after reading here about the batt lap i bought 2 6″ laps and that’s what my students use. and i use a good used 1200 as the prepolish, on smaller stones i may use 1500 or even 3000 on very small. from 1200 prepolish to batt/tin lap with 50,000 powder even gets some of the missed scratches. i’m hoping you’ll all give it a try. remember i cut at high speeds and polish at very very low speed and use the tip of my finger to add the diamond powder to the lap with an extremely slow drop, just enough to keep it wet but not enough to wash it/slig it off, a muddy slur. i have a china soarce for diamond powder. i’ve bought 1000ct for $80 about 8 cents a carat and that will last us a long time. the 50,000 tends to charge the lap as being use so does a lot of facets. a 4.5 carat yag with a modified brilliant cut i polish 24 facets in about a minute and a half. most of time indexing than polishing. if you havent tried it please do and let me know of your results. gemmakermz@cs.com