I bought the new Paulson shaped inlay chips and I really love them but they do wobble when stacked and I can live with the wobble. But I thought with all the talk about warped Paulsons that if I could find an easier way of flattening them than baking them with ceramic blanks I would do that. I looked around the kitchen for some equipment and I came up with this.
I should say as a disclaimer that this thread is not for everybody. If you have chips with metal flakes like the silver 5000's Paulsons or other chips containing metal you should not do this. If you are happy with your Paulsons the way they are don't read any further. Anytime you do something like this you will change the chip permanently and this can potentially ruin a chip. It is not possible to heat a chip and flatten it without changing another chip characteristic so If you're totally content with your chips don't do this or attempt any method to alter the chip. After I started doing this I was so pleased with the results that I processed 900 chips but you may want to just do a trial run on a few chips and see how you like it before doing what I did.
From the photo above you can see that I started with a marble cutting board and some kitchen counter top samples( Silestone) but you could use any ceramic tile samples or bathroom floor tiles with a smoothe glossy finish and they should work fine. I wanted them to be flat and form a suction when slid together. I used 2 oversized coffee/soup cups and a microwave.
I placed 3 chips at the bottom of the cup and placed the cup in the microwave for about 25 seconds.
My microwave is powerful so you will have to adjust the time on yours to get it right. I wanted to get the chip warm-hot but not too hot that the surface would melt. The idea is that the inside of the chip will get warm enough to be bent. I pre heated the cup for 30 secs before heating the chips and I found that the white cup needed about 22 secs and the dark cup needed about 28 secs to heat the 3 chips to the right temperture. The chips were immediately removed and layed in a row on the marbled cuting board.
I then placed the long white tile on top of the 3 hot chips; shiney side down; sandwichwiched between the two shiney surfaces
I used the heals of both hands on either side of the tile and presses very firmly for about 10 secs and quickly fliped the chips over and repeated the process for another ten seconds. I estimate I used about 60 lbs of pressure to flatten the chips.
I then stacked the chips and placed them to the top side of the cutting board underneath some other chips to keep them flat as they cooled to room temperature. I repeated this process each time taking the 3 newly flattened chips and placing them at the botom of the stack.
This picture shows what the chips look like before flatening and afterwards. the 3 on the bottom have been flattened.
I then took the whole rack of 100 and stacked them and left them out all night to keep them flat. I estimate that this process removed 90% of the wobble and as you can see they stack straight and tall.
In conclusion, I'd like to add that it took me about 50 minutes to process these 100 chips using 2 large cups with 3 chips/cup. I'm more pleased with these chips now that they've been processed but I've come to the conclusion that theres no such thing as a perfect chip and even now these aren't perfect but they're better than before. GOOD LUCK!...................ASAM2006
