You know you're a horrible cabber if....

I need to wait till I move then I will get it all set up the way I want 

Right?

The good news is my dad who had a bunch of lapidary equipment & then sold it, went out to the gem & minerals show in Brainerd and was telling my mom maybe he should get back into it. 

I've been slowly dropping hints here & there to him 

I started a topic on the general rocks board about lapidary selling. I had a nice small thick slab of Howardite. The consensus of opinion was that cabbing increases value produced from a slab. I ended up splitting it and made one cab and one slab. I ended up cabbing the remaining slab. What I determined was that a slab that will produce a really nice cab, should be cabbed. I have a bunch of nice Morrisonite that would make good cabs, but nothing special. Since I haven't sold a lot of Morrisonite cabs, I'm leaving the Morrisonite alone. I could sell the slabs but they are nice but not special. Buyers are looking for special. I'll cab what is selling, otherwise wait.

To me & this is the honest to God truth, which may be a problem in itself, is that I don't care about monetary value. 


To me the value is in the stone itself. It is just incredibly amazing to me to hold something so beautiful and part of nature & I really geek out when I think about their creation


I am so enthralled and amazed by the stone itself that I have a really HARD time getting past that just to cab one in the 1st place  

I find cabbing to be very similar to my hobby of photography (not photographing cabs). I would take a film camera where I thought there would be opportunities to find interesting content. Sometimes, I took no pictures. The entire scene might not be interesting, but cropping could produce something interesting. There are some slabs where the scene is too large to crop and make a cab; maybe a belt buckle. A small scene cut from the slab wouldn't be interesting and the slab is best left intact.

Every time I go through my Riker boxes it's like opening a time capsule. I found this cab that my wife bought and wanted recut with her design. The new shape has been cut and the girdle line marked and I Put it away maybe 10 years ago. The girdle needs to be a little over 1mm to get rid of the marked notch. I don't remember if I made the notch or it was a fracture. The material is soft and there isn't room for error other than changing the shape. I was afraid to proceed then and I'm still not sure if I'm ready to take it on.

The top has the original polish as does the nose so the right side was where it was trimmed. I need to remove over 2mm from the right side so I will have an opportunity to get a feel for the material. The plain stuff is very solid and the patterned area has pits and vugs so I will need to take it slow and hope it holds together. I also need to make sure that I don't cough, sneeze or twitch when working on it. If I don't feel steady, I'll put it asway for another day. The new center line will be less than 1/4" to the left so I should have a 4mm dome and some room for sanding and still maintain a decent dome.

I don't remember the original shape, but a significant piece was removed from the right side so I have to reduce two sides my more than 2mm and half of one side by 2mm, even out the girdle and hopefully take care of the bad spot. Since a monitor is 2d, the cab looks like little needs to be done.

For a long time when I made cabs, I used a fat girdle because if something goes wrong, make the girdle narrower. Since my wife collected cabs, I saw a lot of different techniques. I try to make my girdles the same height. Some people like to lower the girdle at the pointy end. This one is 1mm at the point and I will need to make the chipped side 1mm to fix the problem and that means a 1mm girdle all the way around which takes me out of my comfort zone. There is no lowering the girdle on this one if something goes wrong.
I've recut a lot of cabs to fix problems (vugs, pits and factures when making the original shape) generally into a freeform. This will be a challenge.