Post by 3rdrockfromthefun on Jun 18, 2012 7:07:25 GMT -5
Candy Rock Rhyolite Purchased from Jason at NM Stone Supply.
See notes at bottom for more info on cutting.
1 Large Piece - Front
1 - Side
1 - Back (uncut side)
2
3 - Thick, ~1"
4 - Who needs ancient aliens; early humans had books in rock to tell them what to build and paint...
5 - Side A
5 - Side B
6 - Side A
6 - Side B (uncut side)
7
8
9 - Side A
9 - Side B
10 - Preform - Side A
10 - Preform - Side B
10 - Preform - Bottom
11 - Preform - Side A
11 - Preform - Side B
12
13
14
15 - Side A
15 - Side B
16 - View A - The Heart, great for special projects
16 - View B
16 - View C
16 - View D
These are the best of the best of two very large pieces of Candy Rock Rhyolite I cut yesterday. Very hard rock - cutting time on a 10" industrial tile (water cooled) saw was about 3 hours. I swapped blades halfway through - went from lap to tile blade - because I was concerned about dishing my Barranca on this material. I have no clamp so I hand feed these - with a clamp I'd have kept the thinner blade as the tile blade eats a huge swath through the rock - not cool and leaves three times the amount of mud everywhere.
I spent some time over the past few days prior examining this material to determine how best to cut it for scenic effect. It turns out that it's not all that dissimilar to a lot of banded rock, such as obsidian, however there are almost always multiple banding paths criss-crossing through it. The trick, then, is to find an easy way to spot these. And I did.
There are areas of the rock that are deep brown, very hard, sometimes covered with druzy - usually oval shaped and often with a healed fracture running through them. I call hem 'path origins', or simply 'origins'.
Each origin is essentially the initial band along a band-path that usually runs in both directions along the z axis as viewed head on. For surface origins you're only going to see the path going away from you, obviously, as the other path is in the rock that was removed to expose the plate. For obsidian folks it's the equivalent of looking into 'the eye'. For embedded origins it helps to determine the exact orientation. That goes beyond the scope of this simple description but it's not that difficult if you've cut a few rocks before.
If you cut shallow and parallel to the origin you stand a chance of getting orbs, but not always because of that fracture I mentioned and because there are almost always other origins nearby which can disrupt one another's band paths.
Correction. For orbing, a good shot can be achieved by cutting directly into a healed fracture in an origin, blade 90 degrees off the origin. The problem of 'other origins nearby' still applies.
I found it better to cut at a slight angle off of parallel for single origins and when calculating cuts for multiple origins - find a path that is most parallel with them all and cut parallel to that.
If you look at the pictures above you'll see a lot of odd shaped slices. Hopefully my cutting explanation might shed some light on why that happened. It's simply some creative cutting in attempt to get the most from the rock, and sometimes that means dividing the whole thing, or sections of it, into zones - cutting out the zones and then parsing those down accordingly.
As for the thicknesses - that's just a personal preference because I like to cab both sides and I like making worry and palm stones and odd things like that.
Thanks for looking - hope this made some sense. If not then I hope it was at least nice to look at.
See notes at bottom for more info on cutting.
1 Large Piece - Front
1 - Side
1 - Back (uncut side)
2
3 - Thick, ~1"
4 - Who needs ancient aliens; early humans had books in rock to tell them what to build and paint...
5 - Side A
5 - Side B
6 - Side A
6 - Side B (uncut side)
7
8
9 - Side A
9 - Side B
10 - Preform - Side A
10 - Preform - Side B
10 - Preform - Bottom
11 - Preform - Side A
11 - Preform - Side B
12
13
14
15 - Side A
15 - Side B
16 - View A - The Heart, great for special projects
16 - View B
16 - View C
16 - View D
These are the best of the best of two very large pieces of Candy Rock Rhyolite I cut yesterday. Very hard rock - cutting time on a 10" industrial tile (water cooled) saw was about 3 hours. I swapped blades halfway through - went from lap to tile blade - because I was concerned about dishing my Barranca on this material. I have no clamp so I hand feed these - with a clamp I'd have kept the thinner blade as the tile blade eats a huge swath through the rock - not cool and leaves three times the amount of mud everywhere.
I spent some time over the past few days prior examining this material to determine how best to cut it for scenic effect. It turns out that it's not all that dissimilar to a lot of banded rock, such as obsidian, however there are almost always multiple banding paths criss-crossing through it. The trick, then, is to find an easy way to spot these. And I did.
There are areas of the rock that are deep brown, very hard, sometimes covered with druzy - usually oval shaped and often with a healed fracture running through them. I call hem 'path origins', or simply 'origins'.
Each origin is essentially the initial band along a band-path that usually runs in both directions along the z axis as viewed head on. For surface origins you're only going to see the path going away from you, obviously, as the other path is in the rock that was removed to expose the plate. For obsidian folks it's the equivalent of looking into 'the eye'. For embedded origins it helps to determine the exact orientation. That goes beyond the scope of this simple description but it's not that difficult if you've cut a few rocks before.
Correction. For orbing, a good shot can be achieved by cutting directly into a healed fracture in an origin, blade 90 degrees off the origin. The problem of 'other origins nearby' still applies.
I found it better to cut at a slight angle off of parallel for single origins and when calculating cuts for multiple origins - find a path that is most parallel with them all and cut parallel to that.
If you look at the pictures above you'll see a lot of odd shaped slices. Hopefully my cutting explanation might shed some light on why that happened. It's simply some creative cutting in attempt to get the most from the rock, and sometimes that means dividing the whole thing, or sections of it, into zones - cutting out the zones and then parsing those down accordingly.
As for the thicknesses - that's just a personal preference because I like to cab both sides and I like making worry and palm stones and odd things like that.
Thanks for looking - hope this made some sense. If not then I hope it was at least nice to look at.