This week I was finally able to get access to the plasma cutter to cut my diamond. I started by taking the file off canvas and modifying it by adding an ‘H’ to the center. After help from a lab assistant I was able to get both of them cut. It did take be around 20 minutes to dig through the water to find one of my piece. One I was able to find both of them, I ended up with these:

Next I clamped them to the table and started to use the angle grinder and file to remove some of the rouge metal. You can see the before and during below:

Once I finished that, I moved to the sand blaster to give it a nice texture and remove some more material:

Finally, after finishing that, I spray painted them orange. Unfortunately my piece stuck to the paper towel so it did not turn out as well as I wanted 🙁 My final diamonds are shown below:

And here is my clean workspace 🙂

Cost Analysis:

12″ X 24″ Sheet of steel: $19.39 per piece

Spray paint: approximately $1 worth based on Home Depot prices

Labor/Machine Costs:

Plasma Cutter: ~$20 an hour for .5 hours for $10

Sand blasting (negligible cost because it took about 5 minutes)

Total: $30.39 ($14.2 per piece)