Tears

those are beautiful, Otter, too bad you can't get them backlit for a photo....

sands, chocolate and flowers have their place in life too, but i tend to agree, i'd rather have rocks. rocks last longer, and no calories!

KD

hiall ottor how are those to drill holes in there prety how are they to drill holes in shorty

Thanks for the kind words. Yup that's my leg in that pic. Actually my knee. Kinda looks deformed! The camera is a Sony CyberShot 2.1. Takes really good pics. I love it.

Shorty don't know yet, but I'm gonna find out. I've got some plans for them. My sis is into anything with a native american nature. When I told her about these her eyes were all alight. So since they are so cool when you hold them up to light I thought it would be really neat to incorporate them into a dream catcher, which you put into a window and will have the backlighting to be able to see through them. I thought if I broke them trying to drill holes into them, maybe I could talk banjo into selling me some of the ones he's been picking up!

Otter

otter i drilled acouple for my daughter and made pendents they like to chip so go slow if your gonna drill them

llana you can't give me credit for sherry's beautiful rocks ;D! but thanks for trying .

sherry it took me a minute for my eyes to adjust to what i was seeing and realize those white spots are the sky showing through the trees. what a shine!! if you make a dream catcher out of those i can't wait to see it. super job!

kim

OOPS! Sorry about that!

Sherry, what I said before to Kim! Beautiful job on those tears!

llana

Great job on the tears Otter! Super shine, they can be tough to get polished, whatever you used it worked ;D

Hey Otter, did your husband get started on any gems yet? If he has any questions about the lap-lap, don't be afraid to ask for help. I'd be glad to talk him through any unknowns he may come across. The instructions aren't that great for them.

And Shorty buddy, be careful with the eagle feathers. It is illegal to possess any part of an eagle here in Ohio, even a feather. You might want to check the laws first. People here use simulated eagle feathers to stay out of trouble. Later, Don

as far as i know, it is a federal offense to own or procure or traffic eagle feathers. hey, Shorty, i have some Red Tail Hawk feathers i can send you if you want, as far as i know those are ok. this was road kill many moons ago and i took the feathers and baked them to get the mites out.

there are all sorts of places where you buy feathers, craft stores and believe it or not, tackle shops and fishing places that cater to people that hand tie flies.

my aunt in Texas makes dream catchers. they are cool,

KD

Thanks everyone.

Llana, I went back and looked at that pic again. The bottom half of that stone your talking about is me and the camera. The camera is very visible. I'm not sure what is reflecting on the top half. My best guess is the sliding glass door that was behind me.

Sands, thanks for the info. I figured I'd have to be really careful with them since they are so fragile.

Don, yes he started his first marble on Monday night. He chose an 8-sided brilliant. (I think that's what he told me). Anyway, he's already complaining that his first cuts don't count and he still has to go through the process of polishing them! (And he's also whining about how this whole faceting thing is cutting into his sleep schedule at work!!) He also has said that he has had trouble getting the scratches out when he polishes. He thinks that it has something to do with going from the 2nd diamond grit straight to polish. (He said it's like going from 120/220 straight to polish in the tumblers.) He believes that by adding a finer 3rd step b4 polish that it would help. Have you had the same problem or is he doing something wrong? He does agree with Banjo though, he doesn't plan on doing another marble. I think it would be cool if he faceted one of the tears. He told me today that he's planning on registering on the board so he can talk with you and Banjo and Doc. He does like it though. He's considering buying a horizontal lap to use (to replace the copper plates). Don't know much about laps myself so I don't know if his idea is feasible or not. Anywhoo I do believe he's hooked.

I think the biggest thing I did with the tears was not to rush them. Since this was all I had I didn't want to mess them up. I learned from Sandsman and used LOTS of pellet to cushion them. I still had a few chips but nothing major. Since I liked the shapes the way they were I skipped the course grit altogether. I ran 9 days in 120/220, 12 days in 600, 14 days in 1000 and 8 days in Tin Oxide.

Otter