Hand slabbing Montana Moss -- Day 2 Update -- Painful Thumbs

By hand slabbing you mean no vise and push the rock through. I did this for about 10 years using a water cooled 8 inch trim saw. It killed blades. I only do it now with very small rough and a blade that is on life support.

Some very nice material including the Montana. A lot of Montana nodules are duds. You got dendrites and bands.

Yes.  These were cut on an 8" high speed trim saw.   No vise or guide.  The saw has stabilizers that keep the blade straight, so as long as I start the cut straight, it stays straight.  

I've got slab saws but I can't use them for Montana agates since I try to cut around the many fractures.  As you know, the fractures start, stop, and change direction out of nowhere, so I often change the direction of the cut as I work through them.  I'm not willing to continually reposition roundish nodules in a slab saw vise.  That is more tedious than just hand feeding them.  

They are definitely low yielding.  My estimate is that about 80% of the nodules are either complete duds (only clear agate, solid chert, big black blob, tons of quartz) or too fractured for anything but tiny preforms.  Of the remaining 20%, most still have a number for fractures that I can work around.  Not more than 5% of the nodules have good patterns and no real fractures.  

Everything I cut today yielded good slabs because these were all nodules that I windowed and high graded a while ago.  I shaved one or two corners off a whole bunch of nodules, tossed the duds into my rock garden, and put the best looking ones aside to slab first.  Those are the ones I cut today.  These photos in no way represent what I would get if I just cut nodules up at random.  I would have to start with at least 50 pounds of rough to get the 5 pounds or so of quality slabs that I cut today.  That makes them expensive on a per slab basis, and it probably the reason I don't see quality Montana slabs for sale very often, even though the rough is easy to find.  

I forgot to mention, I've been running oil in all my saws, which really seems to extend blade life compare to water.  The blade stabilizers help too since they keep the cuts straight.  

I've got at least 50 hours of cutting on the current 8" x 0.040" blade.  It was $20 with free shipping from China.  Keebon brand.  I have to dress it often when cutting Montanas (with an old aluminum oxide grinding wheel), but the blade shows little wear after a lot of heavy-handed cutting of hard agates.

Lots of nice Montana's there.
I really like the last Montana and the upper Imperial cab.

Not expensive if what you get out the final pile is "priceless". You may need to figure in the cost of the orthopedic surgeon for your thumb restoration. Enjoy!

Alls I can say is .... You da man!

Woah!!! Those are awesome. I love Montana's. Excellent hand slabs. I would totally cut wedged slabs if I tried that.

Probably 2 hours for the Montanas which is actually really fast, although it's stressful trying to cut even slabs by hand. Even more stressful when they are nice rocks!

The Owyhee Gem is awesome stuff.  Most of the pieces I have make pre-form size slablets, so almost no waste.  That makes the high price of rough a little easier to swallow.  There is no mistaking the best pieces for anything but Owyhee Gem.  But one of the pieces I cut yesterday looked almost indistinguishable from Sonora Dendritic Rhyolite.  Still a pretty rock, and it should polish better than rhyolite.  

This kind of gives me hope for using a trim saw as a slab saw as that will probably be the biggest saw I purchase. Thanks for the information. I'm defined following threads like this with interest.