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Post by stardiamond on Jul 5, 2019 12:50:04 GMT -5
The only time I make b cabs it to see how material works. I marked up this Owyhee slab for knife edges, matrix and trouble spots. I've never had any Owyhee with small vugs so I stayed away from them. They meant fractures. I got 3 preforms to make b cabs and the fourth which had the worst scene fractured. I had a small thick piece of Morrisonite that I was going to trim and split. In the process of looking for it I found a too thin piece of Blue Biggs and a too dark marginally interesting piece of Butterfly. I'm not interested in cutting good material now, but cutting something will be skill building.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Member since January 1970
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Jul 5, 2019 13:11:46 GMT -5
Beautiful little piece of Blue Biggs - could you back it with something else (maybe a double-sided cab with different jaspers on each side)?
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Post by stardiamond on Jul 5, 2019 14:07:10 GMT -5
I had a nice size chunk of BB and hand slabbed. Most of the slabs were even and this one was a mess up. It was quite uneven; 1-4.5 mm. I trimmed both sides and now it is a little over 2mm to 3.5 mm. I marked the edges like a girdle and will grind the preform even and flat. There is a surface fracture on the left side and will adjust the shape to deal with and then decide on a final shape.
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Post by stardiamond on Jul 6, 2019 13:32:16 GMT -5
I found my missing Morrisonite piece and split it. I can get one nice cab from it. I found a B slab of Blue Biggs that was glued to the board and I chiseled it off and put it aside . Today I trimmed the edges and may be there are some scenes but not a lot of contrast. I trimmed the edges and matrix off a piece of dryhead which will help with design later. I split another piece of Morrisonite but is too dark to deal with. I bought some Horse Canyon rough a few years ago and it wasn't very good then, but since I mounted a 60 grit wheel I could grind of the matrix and see what was there which was a B slab. I hacked up a piece of Bruneau, put a design on the face yesterday. Today I ground the back so I could draw the pattern on the back. The scene on the back isn't as nice so grinding a dome isn't going to improve the scene. A lot of the slab had impurities in the brown and I don't like incorporating it into the design so I ended up with a smaller preform. I've got some stuff to work on now. I looked at the first Morrisonite slab and took a pencil and followed the pattern. I can't draw an arc like that freehand. I love self designing cabs.
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Post by stardiamond on Jul 7, 2019 14:35:06 GMT -5
I found one scene in the BB with some contrast. The back has the personality of a mudball. Either a flat top or a low dome to preserve what little there is.
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Post by stardiamond on Jul 7, 2019 18:51:56 GMT -5
The theme here is trying to make cabs from lesser material. The good Horse Canyon I worked with in the past was full of moss. The rough I bought is Horse Canyon seam agate. I worked on two pieces and the second preform is from the piece of rough pictured and the first preform is from the slab I showed earlier. Not a lot of moss but some texture in the agate. The rough is like a box of moldy chocolates. I might try some more when I get bored.
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Post by stardiamond on Jul 7, 2019 19:21:43 GMT -5
I got bored.
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Post by fernwood on Jul 8, 2019 5:50:34 GMT -5
Thanks for sharing. Love all the experiments you are doing.
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Post by stardiamond on Jul 8, 2019 19:06:51 GMT -5
I ground the back of the second slab. Since there is a big difference between the sides, I can only guess how it will come out. I took a backlit picture of the front with a template over it.
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Post by stardiamond on Jul 11, 2019 15:31:24 GMT -5
The slab was like a doublet and I had to determine which was the top. I chose the more opaque side. Through 220 soft.
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