How to Cut Rocks Step Three

Sorry it took so long to get back to this, the holidays were a bit crazy and since we are now short one person at work (with absolutely no plans to replace him for at least a year) I have been working more too. This is tough because even though I like my job I would rather be designing and making jewelry so having less time to spend doing that and promoting my store does not really thrill me. Although the extra money is always a good thing lol!

So we left off at the trim saw. The next step is cabbing the stone. This takes a little more skill and time although there are some tricks to make it easier. This step requires lots of water instead of oil to avoid heat. You do want to make sure all of the oil is off of your stone. We use a bucket of kitty litter and a brush. Then wash well with warm, soapy water. (The large round object in the picture is a vibratory tumbler. We use this for all of the odds and ends left over from the trim saw . After several weeks it gives us highly polished stones that the kids at the gem show go nuts over). So we have our lovely almost oval trim sawed stone and we are going to start grinding it to a 15 degree angle with the machine on the left. This machine does not have removable belts, the grinding wheel has tiny diamond pieces embedded in it. This spins at a high rate of speed. A plastic apron is a good idea with this machine as the water you use to keep it from getting too hot sprays in the direction of your body not the wall. Also eye protection is a must. Here is one of the tricks of the trade. The grinding wheel has a natural 15 degree angle so that you really don't have to do any fancy calculations to get it right. Remember that oval we drew on here with the magnesium stick? This is where you want to grind it to. This is the back of your piece and the angled portion is the front. When you have it to the right size and before you begin to grind your dome you need to put it on a dap stick. I am going to leave off here because I need to take pictures of the dap stick and how it is done before I can continue. (Remembering the camera is always an issue for me. When I head for the rock club I usually have two toolboxes and my purse, and since it is winter my coat, gloves etc. I'm lucky I remember my name on some days much less the camera lol!). This is a good stopping point as I will be able to finish hoe to cut rocks with my next post on this subject in a couple of weeks.

Edition Three of My Favorite Etsy Artists

Well it's time to check out some more great Etsy artists. The more time I spend in the forums and browsing the treasury, showcase and time machine, the more wonderful work I see. I have a feeling that there are going to many more editions featuring Etsy artists. Here is this weeks list.

FujiiroFae
Cassandra makes the most beautiful hair ornaments using a Japanese technique called TSUMAMI KANZASHI. Tsumami is the technique of using squares of silk to make flowers, birds or butterflies and is apparently a very old technique. I think the bright colors of the silk and the delicate petals are very unique and charming. These would make a wonderful gift for the holidays so go check her out.

JaredArt

Jared In Kansas

Jared is a multi-talented guy. Not only does he do original drawings and paintings he also takes beautiful photos. (more on those in a minute). I am totally drawn to the simplicity <---and passion and the use of color in these pieces of art. Then there is the photo side of the equation ha ha(read his profile you'll get it) which also rocks. Two sides of the same coin equal some really great talent in both the paint and pencil arena and the photography arena. Definitely worth the look.

Those are my two artists for this week. You can check out there shops by following the links on the right side of my blog. I think I will keep this to two or three artists a week instead of aiming for four or five due to the holidays rapidly approaching. I will have an update on the puppies in the next couple of days.

How To Cut Rocks (Step Two)

The second step to making a cabochon from raw rock is to use a template and decide which portion of the rock you want to use for your finished masterpiece. This particular template is two-sided which I prefer as I like to make my mark on both sides. I then mark a "b" on the side that is the back with a magnesium wire. That way I don't make any mistakes when I am forming the stone. Sometimes the back and the front can be very similar and as much work as goes into forming these cabochons, I don't want to make a mistake on which side I am working on. Templates com in mm sizes and you can also get squares, hearts, crosses and many more. I am still a beginner so I generally use the medium sized oval. At this point it is time to fire up the trim saw. Make sure that you wear safety glasses at all times because I can guarantee small pieces of rocks are going to chip off and go flying. Basically the idea here is to trim as close to your oval (or square or whatever you choose) as possible without going over the line. There are of course rules for using this kind of equipment safely. Cut slabs only, not chunks or nodules, Cut straight lines only, let the saw do the work, forcing the saw tears out the diamonds (this is bad. The blades are expensive). If saw is running dry add oil (duh, but you'd be surprised), If the you see sparks STOP! your pushing too hard or the saw needs more oil. (see rule number three and four). Clean up after yourself. So to the right is a picture of Ohio flint (beautiful rock by the way. As you can see flint is not necessarily all grey). You can see the magnesium template mark and you can also see that I got a hair too close to the line and also managed to ship a corner off. (What can I say it was my first attempt.) I am saving this for when I have practiced a bit more so I can salvage it because this is one beautiful piece of rock. That pretty much covers step number two. I will post again next week on step number three.

How to Cut Rocks (The first step to making a cabochan)

Okay so I have joined my local lapidary club also know as the Summit County Lapidary and Gem Society. (in conjunction with the Akron Mineral Society they are holding a huge rock and gem show the last weekend in October. If you are in town and interested in this kind of thing you should definitely check it out. Just leave me a comment and I will be happy to give the details. If I have time I will blog the details sometime next week This is in Akron, Ohio)

Anyway I am learning to take the raw form of the rock and turn

it into a finished cabochon. This is what you start out with. Actually first you have to go to the quarry or mine (This one is quartz from a quarry about 20 minutes from my house) and find the stones that you want to use. Be prepared, bring LOTS of water, not only is it hot, thirsty work but you need several bottles of water to squirt on your rocks to get rid of dirt and see what they might look like when they have a shine.

This particular stone on the left is a fossil stone that one of the more experienced rock club members pointed out to me. (Okay he pretty much gave it to me because I would have stepped right over it even with him giving me lots of hints lol!) Any way I am pretty excited about this one and hope to get many good pieces to work with out of it.

So once you have your stones (did I mention how heavy they are to carry back to the car? I ended up with a laundry basket full of them) you need to wash them off and decide which ones to start with. Then it is time to start cutting them up. This is one

of the slabbers at the rock club. Pretty simple to use. You do have to make sure that the rock is clamped down extremely well because it would be a VERY BAD THING if one came loose while being sawed. They have templates that allow you to measure how thick you want each piece (not computerized or anything you hold the template up to the saw and move the rock over to match lol). Any way you set your chain so it stops automatically and you close the lid and turn it on. That's all there is to it. Oh and you want to wear old clothes and a full body vinyl or plastic apron. Did I mention how much oil these machines use? Never, never open the lid until the saw stops spinning! So once it stops spinning and you give it a couple of minutes to let all of the oil drip back down to the bottom (you do this as many times as you need

to slab all of your rock and this is what you end up with. After you

clean the oil off (kitty litter works great for this) and then you wash them thoroughly.

As you can see we still have some work to do to make these slabs of rock into something pretty and interesting to wear. I am going to continue with this next week at some point and show you what the next step is.

Can you see the possibilities?!

P.S No puppies yet. She looks like she is going to explode poor thing. Will update as we go.

Metal Weaving

Well I wanted to share a new technique that I learned last week at my local labidary club. I took a class on metal weaving (yes just like weaving with wool with a few adjustments I imagine, I don't know how to weave with yarn or wool). I thought the end result was quite nice and now have a head full of plans to adapt, change and challenge myself to come up with new designs using this technique.

As you can see you do need some type of vise to hold the ends firmly in place. I use masking tape to protect the wire from being damaged by the vise. You also need to tape the wires at the bottom in order to keep them together and to mark which side is the front. Because you have to lower the pattern into the vice at least every other time you weave it is important to know which way is the front and which is the back. (trust me on this I am speaking from experience. While you can make an interesting pattern by swithching front to back if you aren't doing it on purpose it is a disaster!)

So once you get to the desired length you cut off the ends and take your frame wire and attach them together with more wire. This can be kind of tricky and does take some practice. Not too tight and not too loose. I will be practicng this with copper and plated metals until I have the technique down well. I actually find the

weaving part to be the easiest of the entire design. So from this point it is just a matter of wrapping and forming into the actual bracelet shape. You can of course make or attach any type of clasp that you wish. All in all it was two, well-spent Saturday mornings to learn this technique. It took about three hours to do the actual weaving and another three to finish it completely. I am hoping that with experience I will get just a wee bit quicker at it. I would also like to come up with some ways to embelish and play with it. Well that's it for now.

I will be posting another blog on some more of my favorite Etsy artists later this week and hopefully will have an update on our puppies (who haven't arrived yet by the way)