mystickoi
starting to spend too much on rocks
Member since February 2010
Posts: 211
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Post by mystickoi on Apr 1, 2010 15:52:21 GMT -5
Hi Folk, Well... I was talking with one of my customers (I retail imported Koi), and found out that he was into lapidary. His wife was after him to clean out the garage, and so we traded some koi and filter equipment for his stuff. I scored a 10" saw, a polishing lap (not sure what to call this), an expanding drum sander, a grinder of some sort, and 5 each 5 gallon buckets of rough and slabs. Here is a photo of the equipment... Anyway, I'm not sure what these strange looking wheels are on the end of the grinder, and my buddy didn't know as well! Any ideas? Thanks! Bill
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Post by fishenman on Apr 1, 2010 16:01:01 GMT -5
Congratulations on the trade. You have a polishing spool on the end of the grinder. It gets impregnated with diamond grit and you polish your cabs with it.
Geoff
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Post by drocknut on Apr 1, 2010 18:21:31 GMT -5
Nice trade you made, congratulations. Hope we'll be seeing some of your cabs soon.
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Post by frane on Apr 1, 2010 19:58:40 GMT -5
WOW! You made out really well! Now it is time to get busy and start in on all the fun! Fran
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NDK
Cave Dweller
Member since January 2009
Posts: 9,440
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Post by NDK on Apr 1, 2010 20:41:37 GMT -5
Great bunch of equipment. The saw and lap look almost new from here. Congrats on the fine trade.
Nate
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mystickoi
starting to spend too much on rocks
Member since February 2010
Posts: 211
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Post by mystickoi on Apr 1, 2010 22:28:18 GMT -5
Thanks! I think everyone made out on this... his wife got her garage back, pop got a brand new filter for his koi pond, his son and daughter picked out some nice baby koi, and I got a bunch of "stuff".
I'm a complete newbie with this. I've been collecting some slabs over the last month or so, and am excited to try and make something out of them. Even recently I purchased some tools to try my hand a wire wrapping. Still, I'm confused on this...
This grinder has what looks like either laminated wood or highly compressed leather pads, shaped into those strange curves. There is a little pad on the end that I figure is for polishing (yes?), but I can't for the life of me imagine doing any polishing on the curved surfaces???
Kind Regards, Bill
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CUL-Ann
spending too much on rocks
rock lover~
Member since September 2008
Posts: 380
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Post by CUL-Ann on Apr 1, 2010 22:47:14 GMT -5
Koi pond, now that is the other thing I spend to much $$$ on. We have a small pond in the garden pluss a 9,000 gal pond with koi :cheesy:
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Post by Woodyrock on Apr 2, 2010 1:13:08 GMT -5
Bill: The polishing spools may have had different grits of diamond on each spool. You need to ask the previous owner what grits they were. Even though they are hard, you will get a very good polish. The more usually two grits would be 14,000, and 50,000 mesh diamond used with silicone extender.
We had some Koi in our pond, but changed to feeder gold fish.........Koi turned out to be very expensive racoon food. Woody
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mystickoi
starting to spend too much on rocks
Member since February 2010
Posts: 211
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Post by mystickoi on Apr 2, 2010 19:44:32 GMT -5
Thanks Woody! Like I said, I'm a complete newbie. I spent several hours today going through the buckets of rock I received in the trade. Some junk, some nice stuff, and a fair amount of really good stuff (bloodstone, crazy lace, etc). I also found several black widow spiders! Ummm... I saw some Jasper on ebay a few days back. They call it "Koi Jasper" from Africa. It was mostly red, with some black and a little white in it. I guess it is supposed to be like a Showa or Sanke varity koi? LOL FYI - The koi just left of center is a Showa. Kind Regards, Bill
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Post by Bikerrandy on Apr 2, 2010 19:54:02 GMT -5
Ahhhh, you're a fish dealer? lol.... I thought that you were talking about Koi Jasper. I used to have 30 pounds of it, PM'd you but you just answered my question I suppose. ;D
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Post by johnjsgems on Apr 2, 2010 20:24:04 GMT -5
Check out the Diamond Pacific catalog page VIII. They have a picture of the 1973 Genie. The white hood/pan in your picture goes on the left side for the grinding wheels. The unit came with three two groove polishing spools. Hardwood spools were the standard until all the soft diamond wheels came out. Biggest problem was cross contamination.
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mystickoi
starting to spend too much on rocks
Member since February 2010
Posts: 211
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Post by mystickoi on Apr 2, 2010 21:06:44 GMT -5
Thanks John. I found it... just like you said, an original 1973 DP Genie (their first). So this thing is an old timer!
From their catalog;
THE GENIE - 1973 Our first Genie featured our Galaxy Diamond Grinding Wheels—the first diamond grinding wheels developed especially for use by the lapidary. For sanding and polishing stones, the Genie had three Benelex Spools with custom shaped grooves to fit the curves of stones. Each groove was charged with a different grit diamond compound. The method was slow, but it worked.
Bill
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Post by johnjsgems on Apr 2, 2010 21:20:49 GMT -5
Bill, they had 6 grooves (three spools). Most of the spool polishers had 6 grooves and steps starting with 325. Even if the spools you have are not contaminated, figuring out what mesh diamond was on them will be some fun. Check the ends, maybe someone marked them. Since you have the Covington expanding drum arbor set up you may not want to bother with the spools.
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drjo
fully equipped rock polisher
Honduran Opal & DIY Nut
Member since May 2008
Posts: 1,581
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Post by drjo on Apr 2, 2010 22:32:24 GMT -5
Good score!! I'd have traded ALL my 24" Koi for that stuff! Leave it to johnjsgems to get you going in the right direction so quickly! Read all the back forum pages and you'll soon be up to speed. Dr Joe .
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fossilbrain
spending too much on rocks
Cookie Monster agate
Member since October 2007
Posts: 360
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Post by fossilbrain on Apr 4, 2010 22:25:24 GMT -5
must have been some nice koi ;P Just joking: Congrats (I know koi are awesome, too -- my ancient, blind one, dependent on more oxygen than healthy fish, just died two days ago when the 75 gal.'s auxiliary/redundant aerator went out again (which had made it listless before, not affecting the small, young fish). You're going to love that machinery Koi last a long time & rocks last forever ;P
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Post by Bejewelme on Apr 5, 2010 8:16:42 GMT -5
WOW what a great deal on equipment, the fish are so pretty wow! You will be cabbing soon enough now!
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