Polishing the details in marble

["adsach" <adsach@zzzzzzzzzzzzzz>]

Hi group - having read the entire archives, I really like this group

I am playing squirrel this year:

For now, I am carving small marbles (8-30 inches) outside in the gazebo embraced by lady summer.
- bringing them to final form with rasping and fine chisels.

Then when old man winter grabs ahold,  I can hone, sand and polish snug in my basement.

If the plan works, this will be my first winter as an active stone carver.

My goal is to bring the marble to a high gloss in certain areas - somewhere in the 1000-3000 grit range. I want to be smoothing without destroying the form.

I am comfortable working on curved surfaces with a radius as large as my wrist. There seem to be several reasonable approaches, including basic wet/dry paper and a sanding block. I am confident the polish can be achieved and the form can be preserved.

When curved surfaces become smaller than a radius of a finger, or meet to form a delicate valley it is much harder to preserve the form. A few misdirected strokes with 100 grit sandpaper can smooth the more delicate shapes into flattened arcs or suggestive lumps.

While working on a Terracotta head recently, I saw how smoothing with a knife in a lengthwise 'chisel' motion seemed to 'recarve' the form - preserving and enhancing detail. Conversely, smoothing with the same knife in a sideways 'drawknife' motion introduced flat spots and subtle washboard effects. So 'chisel' was good, 'drawknife' was bad and a diagonal motion was sometimes good  (mostly to resolve the grooves where 'chisel' motions overlapped.)

I am attempting to translate the technique that worked so well in Terracotta to Marble. To do this I need sanding tools that can deliver a controlled 'chisel' stroke in small areas. From the catalogs, it seems like several diamond hand files in different grits should do this nicely.

Does this idea make sense?

Can I hear your better idea?

Thank you,
Ad Sach