New to jade carving, looking for advice on cleaning my work up!

Hey again all! Been carving bone, wood and softer stuff for years. Finally making the transition to stoner, but things are not going amazingly well...

For freeform shapes; hei matai, honu etc. things are working pretty good. It's slow going def a learning process; however for detailed pieces, anything with grooves or multiple layers I'm having a really difficult time keeping my lines clean and getting rid of any machining marks. I'm at work this morning, but I'll post some pics tonight to better explain what I'm running into.

My basic setup at the moment is a wet tile saw I'm roughing the pieces out with, some 40/60 grit diamond burrs for shaping and then some 120, 180, 300, 600 burrs to gradually shape and clean as I go further. My last step to polish has been a sandpape mandrell with 300 grit paper and that has been doing a pretty good job.

I guess, anyone have any pointers or a link to some good posts about starting out? Or are there any good books on the subject?

Not trying to bankrupt myself on tools either so hopeful there is a cheapish way to go about learning this!!!

Thanks!

[ Edited by: djwirk 2010-11-05 10:12 ]

[ Edited by: Djwirk 2010-11-05 14:34 ]

Wow, found a earlier post of mine from my first jade piece over a year ago! Can't believe it's been that long since I started stone. Took a pretty good carving break I guess. Anyway, there is at least one pic here. Would appreciate any help!

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=34186&forum=7&vpost=487753