Low-cost way to bullnose & polish edge of granite tile

Question

What's a good, cheap way to polish the dull, chalky, cut edges of black granite 3x6 subway tile (approx. 10 linear feet, total). The tile is still boxed.

I have the following power tools available:

• Basically every variant of power drill available, most of which are variable-speed, at least one of which is quite powerful.

• A 4-1/2" 11,000rpm angle grinder

• Three multitools (the kind that use triangular sanding pads).

The main thing I want to accomplish is at least semi-polishing the dull edge, but ideally, I'd also like to shave down the edge a bit so it's at least slightly bullnosed. I can live without the bullnosing if it ends up being too expensive to bother with.

I will not go out and buy yet another expensive power tool that I'll never use again. At this point, $40-50 is the absolute limit of what I'll spend before deciding to just live with exposed unpolished edges.

I have the following (South Florida) stores readily available: Home Depot, Lowes, Harbor Freight, Northern Tool, Sears, Floor & Decor (a Florida tile big-box store that nevertheless seems to not sell anything related to stone-polishing), and Amazon (Prime ONLY... I can't wait for normal ground shipping).

Someone, somewhere HAS to have something cheap, like a mount that can go in a drill, or diamond grit pads for a multitool... but if any of these stores have something like that (and actually have it in stock for immediate purchase, as opposed to "online only"), I'm just not seeing it.

Answer 1

There are dry polishing pads made for marble and other stones:

Amazon: Dry stone polishing pad set

These are made for an angle polisher that runs around 3000-4000RPM, so one of your drills would work, but you'd need a mandril adapter that you could chuck up in the drill since the pads don't have a post for the drill.

The process is to start with the roughest pad and make several passes with each pad (remove all visible scratches from the last pad before moving up to the next one), so it's a time consuming endeavor. It takes a little skill to keep the pad moving and buff it all evenly, but it should be too much of a challenge.

The description says that for the best results, use with water. That could be a challenge depending on your drill setup - just don't use too much water.

And for what it's worth - I've never seen this in stock in any major retail store. It's just too specialty of a product for them to devote shelf space to. Most people still leave any stonework to professionals.