We got such a great deal on this old lapidary machine and day after day I am still in awe at the fact that it is still working as it has to be at least 30 years old if not more. So the last few stones we did had surfaces scratches we just could not get out. It was really frustrating until we realized we needed to replace the sanding drum and the grit was practically gone! Well that is actually where the problem started, see this is a Craftool lapidary machine and there are no old manuals floating out there so we are guessing at what needs to be done to get the sanding drum off for replacement. So for two nights now we have been playing with the machine to guess how the sanding drum comes off or loosened to replace the sanding belt. Finally this evening we figured it out as this type of drum is thankfully still used today! After I figured out how to get the paper off, the next step was to try to figure out what grit to use for the drum. We are guessing because like I said, there are no manuals floating around so we ordered two different grit types to see which one will work the best right before the polish step. So….now we have to wait until it arrives before we cut any more stones. I am almost at the point that I am going to put the cut stones in the tumbler, but too afraid they may chip because I only have a few!

I had no idea about this one and I found it kind of cool. After I made the custom necklace on the previous post I decided to shine another apache tear drop to make another necklace. I was wearing safety glasses of course to be safe, but as I was getting down to the last stage of grinding/prepolish on the lapidary machine I noticed that these rainbow flashes were hitting my eyes. It was actually making it difficult to polish up the stone because the rainbows were distorting my view. So I thought that was quite odd so I took off the glasses to inspect the stone and didn’t really see anything to cause that kind of rainbow through the glasses. So to see if the lens of the goggles were playing tricks I tried another stone and the rainbows did not happen. Hmmmm….odd.
So after i polished up the stone I was inspecting it for spots that needed to be repolished and that is when I saw it. There must be some kind of “inclusion” in the obsidian that looks like fibers that run from one side of the stone to the other. It catches the light and creates a chatoyancy with the stone only at two ends of the stone where the “fibers” terminate. At those ends if you hold it to the light at just the right angle, you will see a bunch of tiny purple/blue specs almost like dichrotic glass. There is no way I can catch it with a camera as you have to be looking at it at just the right angle with just enough light behind it. However, it is pretty cool!

I am having so much fun with my new rocks as it is so exciting to figure out what I can make next. There are so many different types of rocks now that are just begging to be made into something beautiful. One of the things I got was bags and bags of apache tears, also known as obsidian. I had no idea what to do with them as they were all shapes and sizes. I got an idea to go ahead and polish up one of the smaller stones to see what it would look like. So I took it over to the lapidary machine and away I went polishing away. Before long (actually not long at all – like 30 minutes!) I saw a beautifully shaped stone and I held it under the light and noticed it was translucent, almost clear like a smokey quartz. This got me thinking how beautiful this would look hanging as a focal stone from a necklace. So off I went and drilled a nice hole in the top of the “tear drop” and decided to do a wire wrap design on the top. I think it came out quite nice after I accented it with a few smokey quartz stone and bali silver beads. Check it out below!

I worked on this Sardonyx Pendant for quite some time trying to get it just right and make sure the stone looked right in the bezel. I finally got it the way I wanted and its complete so I have posted it on the site. The sardonyx stone is the same kind of stone in the previous post, but I hand shaped this one a little differently so this is another designer cabochon with a custom fit bezel. The stone was a ton of fun to make as its really relaxing to sit there and grind and shape the stone until you can “see” the cabochon you want to come out of the stone. Because this is as type of onyx, the polish is gorgeous on this one as it took a very lustrous shine. The bezel wire I used was fine silver with a sterling silver back that I actually cut out. I cut it out for a few reasons as when you put this stone up to the light, you can actually see right through it in several different spots. The banding in this stone has a smokey quartz line in it where it becomes clear. There is a think link of druzy smokey quartz crystal towards the bottom, so having the back cut out, you can see that the stone is translucent in spots. It definitely makes for a one of a kind piece, as we cut two cabochons out of the main stone and because of the variations in the banding, neither one is the same!

Check it out below:

My 3 year old keeps playing with all the stones we collected from Cape May Point but have yet to tumble, I decided that it was about time to start a new batch. Now with the lapidary machine, we can cut some of the bigger stones we find however, there are still some absolutely beautiful pieces that get tumbled and shaped naturally from the ocean that just need a great polish. There are also a bunch of Cape May Diamonds that need to be polished up so we can use them as we ran out of nice sized ones to wire wrap.

With my 3 year olds help loading the tumbler and mixing in the water, we loaded the new tumbler with our found treasures and started the 3 week process of tumbling. I haven’t used this tumbler for a while so I hope I put enough grit for the first round of fine polish! Check back in 3 weeks to see if its worked!