thank you very much for the kind words! yea different isnt always good, but in this case, i think they came out great. they were really sturdy when finished as well... wish i spent a little more time on them and added some thorns to the stems, but time ran up!

I don't think you need thorns. When florists sell the real thing, they remove all the thorns first. Lin

this is a great topic for an entire post... but for just the roses, and im not sure of technical terms, but i used a spiral stitched 3/4th inch thick 10"(?) cotton wheel on a stationary buffer/polisher. as for the polish, its some sort of mirror finish (jewlery) polish that comes in dirty white bricks... i ordered this a few years ago, im going to guess from coswell (which i must have spelt wrong, i can't find their website and the catalog is at the shop) this is the same place i order my satin rogue for finishing grain on stainless (i believe i use 80grit for the satin rogue)

from experience youre much better off buying polish from specialized companies, as for most of the polish ive gotten from industrial supply companies (MSC and the likes) has been quite lacking.

i mirror polished each petal before i started to assemble them (hence using such a big wheel) but they were sturdy enough to polish afterwards with a rotary buffer... the thing with mirror polishing is to dress the wheels if they need it... you want an absolutely grit free surface to apply the polish to, and don't be afraid to re-dress the wheel when it gets dirty. the smaller the wheel the less you'll need the spiral stitching, but you need a pretty solid surface on the wheel to get a good mirror polish on it.

i have never polished steel to a mirror, and added heat colour, it turn out awesome. it kept a great shine, and i kept most of them an awesome gold color that the mirrored surface brought right out.

maybe when i have time we can start a new post on polishing and buffing, i know just from my experience the last 10 years, i've gone from making horse glue for hardwheels, to using organic earth glues, to using mostly bertex(?) wheels for hardwheeling stainless. let alone the different grit combinations, and rogues used. i'd love to know what everyone else has gotten into.

just realized i never login before i post. hopefully the moderators will put my message up, i have no time to repost it at the moment. take care