The coarsest metal you can get ‘over the counter’ is #15. You can feel the grains with your fingers. It offers a visually textured finish although the surface of the polished metal is smooth. It is also very durable as the polished layer is so thick.
Kintsugi materials, polishing tools and this
These tools work for polishing fine powder metals and some of the finer graded metals. They are best for thin line polishing. If you try to polish wide areas it is more difficult to get a good, smooth finish.
Kintsugi materials, lacquer for pigment. This lacquer. It is used as a base for adding colorants to get a specific colored lacquer. It is highly refined, much more so than basic lacquer and not as thick as nashiji.
Here is a slightly cheaper version, it isn’t as clear, more along the amber color line.
Charcoal can be used in kintsugi as a cleaning agent in either hard or powder form. You use it to clean the surface of the piece after the initial clean up, you use it with water. The charcoal must be hard wood, oak or something similar.
Kintsugi materials, charcoal
Number 10 silver and gold marufun are very rough and need a lot of filling in of the grains in order to be able to polish them to a smooth surface. As the graded metal numbers get larger the grains of metal get larger and the finished polish shows more visual texture. The texture comes from the lacquer that fills in between the grains of metal. The larger grains also provide a thicker layer of metal that is a lot more durable. They take longer to do the infil with lacquer and longer to polish back out to a finished surface. They are much more difficult to break through to black so it is less likely to mess up using grinds above #5
