Glass looks at its best when it has lustre, vibrancy and colour. Cast glass lacks all but colour until it has been cold worked; which means a lot of grinding and polishing.
Grinding off extra bumps and ridges is relatively straight forward however the polishing can be, and will be, a different kettle of fish.
I've used a flat bed rotary polisher to do the fine grinding and polishing. This is a gradual process involving the use of various grades of pads encrusted with different grades of diamond chips.
Each pad has to be used until each layer 'seems' to be smooth and then you move onto the next. It sounds easy however in order to keep the glass and diamond pads cool everything has to be kept wet; wet glass looks like polished glass therefore each step looks great, hence 'seems' smooth. As soon as the glass is dry you can see the haze the microscopic grinding causes on the glass.
Once I've moved through the 60, 120, 200, 400 etc grades it is eventually (6 hours later) time to bring the glass to a polish. Each grade made the haze less dense as the grinding scratches became shallower and shallower. The final stage is the use a polishing pad (like a thick felt pad) with a fine grit polishing paste, and not forgetting the water.
Look at the difference between the before and after of this areas below.
The pity about this process in this piece is the purpose of getting the rear to a fine polish is so that it can be bonded to another sheet of glass to carry it in the final assembly. As such, this is the one and only chance of exploring the beauty of the glass before it is hidden from view; and isn't it beautiful!
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