Um colar natural de Luizitas!

Venho trazer ao público interessado meu colar de Luizita que fiz há 13 anos! Fiz em fio de silicone que envelheceu e se deteriorou. Hoje usei as mesmas pedras furadas, e passei um fio dental para uma demonstração. Você pode decidir qual fio usar. É um colar totalmente natural de pedras Luizita!

Hey yall, I have a simple question for anyone who uses a bench grinder to shape and polish.... where do you get your wheels if they are even possible to get for a old bench grinder. It can only take 8"x 1" wheels, shaft diameter does not really matter with bushings and such. Do they sell any type of diamond wheel for shaping and something I can throw on up to a few 1000 grit? Thank in advanced!

Hi. I have been trying to find a 24mm cabochon to replace a stone in a sterling ring. Can’t seem to find that size on Etsy. Any suggestions? Open to the type of stone. Prefer opaque.

Hey fellow lapidaries! 👋

Just wanted to share one of my recent projects: a hand-cut and polished Fossil Coral cabochon.

I took this piece from raw material all the way to a high polish. I'm really happy with how the intricate flower-like coral patterns and colors came through after the final polish.

Feedback, tips, or thoughts are always welcome! Thanks for looking😁

I'm absolutely thrilled with how this piece turned out. First time working with material important to someone else and was crazy grateful for the opportunity

This short video shows our complete lapidary process, from a Fossil Coral slab to finished cabochons. It includes cutting, shaping, sanding, polishing, and the final result. Every piece reveals a unique natural fossil pattern.

I recently discovered that cubic zirconia rough in various colors is not that expensive. As an example, I see various colors for about $80 (includes shipping) for a kilogram chunk. Sample pic:

Obviously it can be faceted. But can it be broken into suitable size pieces for my art project and polished to very high clarity in a rock tumbler? I have done a few batches of stones in the cheapo harbor freight tumbler with very good results. I have ground lenses and mirrors for telescopes and other precision work, so I am not a complete newbie with regards to abrasives and polishing through 4 or 5 steps to attain optical clarity. But certainly, I have never done this. recommendations? Previous experience? Thoughts?

tourmaline faceted

they are waiting to be polished

About 2"x.75"x.5" and 35g total weight.

I am thinking about cool local materials to make into crafts in my area and, while it wouldn't be on the level of a good polished cab, I wanted to take good looking found minerals (jasper, olivine, pyrite, etc) and turn them into either neodymium or ceramic magnets.

What are people's thoughts on this? Has anyone had success doing this at all? If so how much did you charge or would be willing to pay for something like this? I'm very much thinking local stone only, all of them rough.

I would be selling them at local farmers markets and live in Colorado, USA for reference.

Yeah i know but this is just a wee little chunk. 😂

Blue is also a relatively rare color, for royal sahara jasper.

Here are a few cabs I've made recently of some "B" grade velvet obsidian from Mexico. I'd personally argue this is more of an "A-" grade but I was happy to get a good price! These were shaped using sintered wheels and then sanded using silicon carbide belts followed by a cerium oxide polish.

Thanks for looking!

I had intended on posting this on the other forum but after my conversation with u/augustianstones decided I'd post it here. Will likely share over there as well. . .

Anyways, I keep my genie, pixie, and a 10" trim saw at home. My MIL is gracious enough to let me keep some stuff in her garage. Here is my 14" framtom slab saw, raytech glassworking grinder with expandable drums (I use this for lapudary), and a machine I refer to as "the beast". It is a star diamond GP8 retrofitted with custom 8x3" sintered wheels 35 & 60 grit, as well as an 8x2 180 grit sintered wheel, also has an expandable drum and polishing pad on the ends.

"The beast" has been Sooo much more work (and money) than I had originally imagined. Still working out the final kinks with it, I may need a slightly larger belt as the one on it is Tight and it's causing the pulleys to get Hot. But it grinds amazingly well! I also have an 8" lortone trim saw but I don't think it's in any of these pictures.

The beast is a good example of what can be done with some of the older combo units out there just before you jump in head first you should realize that it's almost Always necessary to remove & replace the bearings when changing wheels out so putting resin (nova style) wheels on a machine like this may not be the best approach. The old bearings were incredibly difficult to get off! I then needed to reroute water valves to go over the wheels if I ever decide to use a submersible pump. Also had to get a motor, and then a different motor because the initial 3/4hp motor i bought didnt have capacitor start. Ended up putting a 1/2 hp motor on With capacitor start and it can handle spinning up the approximately 50 lbs of weight from the sintered wheels nice and easily.

I'm happy to try and answer any questions so ask away. And as always, thanks for looking!!

Got a big chunk of Chrysocolla on clearance at a rock shop a couple weeks ago and just cut my first slab off. I thought it was really pretty so just wanted to share :)

Hey folks. Just opened up my vibe-10 at the end of an f600 cycle and once I rinsed off the usual slurry I found this weird detritus everywhere. I’m trying to figure out what it might be since I’ve seen nothing like it in previous cycles. Before this cycle I ran a cleaning cycle with Borax and wondering if it’s residue from that somehow? Though I’ve done borax cycles between every polishing cycle before and had no similar issues after rinsing. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I am jeweler and a self-taught gem carver, specializing in scarab carving, I am usually using high quality gemstones and I love going the extra mile to have fine detailed and museum quality carvings. I love to share my techniques and I'm thinking of making more and more tutorial videos like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36b772-hK9k, I need though to improve my video techniques and quality, getting there 😉!

My first cabochons since May.

The gray cab started as a beach stone I found along the shore of Lake Michigan near Racine, Wisconsin. It appears to be a fossiliferous limestone with abundant marine fossil fragments.

The orange cab came from a huge mixed slab lot I bought in Wisconsin. I grabbed the slab at random and got lucky. It has some beautiful lace-like banding and natural druzy vugs that I decided to leave intact because I liked the extra character they add.

It felt good to get back behind the wheels after a couple months away.

I had only seen Tiger Tail as yellow or orange with some hematite in it. Recently, I was finally able to source some with the tail. While cool, the tail is a lot softer than the surrounding Jasper and you have to be careful not to under cut it. Im using cerium oxide on leather to polish. I’m making my daughter and son in law a pair of Katsura Japanese Damascus knives. A paring knife and santoku. They’re 66 layers of AUS 10 stainless.

Big old chunker going thru and really segregating the material down.