Post by LCARS on Aug 17, 2008 14:50:24 GMT -5
Hey guys!
It's been a while since I posted a project and to be honest I havent been doing too much of anything exciting and new lately.
However, here's a little something that just came out of polish this weekend...
5mm Ladybug Cab
I cut this and a couple of other small test pieces from a red fancy jasper slab that I bought at the annual Leonardo Davinci Center Rock and Mineral Show here back in March.
Right away I could see it had potential to cut several ladybug preforms since it has three fairly straight and continuous quartz veins with dark spots.
I traced out the preforms with a scribe and a circle template, centering the quartz vein while including some dark spots. I cut out the preform with my Workforce (running a new and better blade BTW).
I dopped the cut-out on a slightly lathed down golf tee and did the shaping and doming with the Dremel using diamond discs.
Sorry there isn't a photo with better perspective but it's easy to imagine, it's a slightly truncated hemisphere shape.
I tumbled my test pieces with a batch of jasper & small beach pebbles for two weeks in prepolish, two weeks in AO polish & another week in TO polish. The other two test pieces were 3mm & 4mm but they ended up losing too much mass in the tumbler to be useful for anything but mismatched earring studs now.
The slab will probably be able to produce a couple nice pairs of size matched ladybug earrings and a few fridge magnets before the good stuf is gone and I can always cab up and/or tumble whatever is left over.
It's been a while since I posted a project and to be honest I havent been doing too much of anything exciting and new lately.
However, here's a little something that just came out of polish this weekend...
5mm Ladybug Cab
I cut this and a couple of other small test pieces from a red fancy jasper slab that I bought at the annual Leonardo Davinci Center Rock and Mineral Show here back in March.
Right away I could see it had potential to cut several ladybug preforms since it has three fairly straight and continuous quartz veins with dark spots.
I traced out the preforms with a scribe and a circle template, centering the quartz vein while including some dark spots. I cut out the preform with my Workforce (running a new and better blade BTW).
I dopped the cut-out on a slightly lathed down golf tee and did the shaping and doming with the Dremel using diamond discs.
Sorry there isn't a photo with better perspective but it's easy to imagine, it's a slightly truncated hemisphere shape.
I tumbled my test pieces with a batch of jasper & small beach pebbles for two weeks in prepolish, two weeks in AO polish & another week in TO polish. The other two test pieces were 3mm & 4mm but they ended up losing too much mass in the tumbler to be useful for anything but mismatched earring studs now.
The slab will probably be able to produce a couple nice pairs of size matched ladybug earrings and a few fridge magnets before the good stuf is gone and I can always cab up and/or tumble whatever is left over.
