Jewelry Polishing Compounds

Polishing Compounds

There are 4 different levels of polishing compounds. Starting from the coarsest, they are:

• Cutdown Compounds - these include the brown tripoli and bobbing compound
• Intermediate Compounds - fray tripoli, graystar, white diamond, crocus. platinum tripoli, yellow bobbing
• Polishing Compounds - red rouge, yellow rouge, hard white, white rouge, black rouge
• Super Finish Compounds - blue magic, green rouge, fabuluster, zam

A word about recovery

When working with gold, there is a lot of money tied up in the polishing dust that comes off the wheel. The average gold content in polishing dust is 3/4 to 1-1/4 ounces of gold in every pound of dust. Even the smallest shops create enough dust to make the gold well worth recovering (and refining). You should pay attention to dust collection and washout as well.