I had an old bracelet laying around for several years that had three pieces of Blue dyed Agate in it and it had been begging for me to do something with it.
Since I could no longer look at the bracelet the way it was, I started to envision it with some other stones in it, I decided to cut and polish some very nice Arizona Turquoise that I had in my stash of rough Turquoise.
I had a very nice large piece of blue/green Turquoise with brown matrix in it so I decided to slab that up on my Diamond slab saw and proceeded to mark the slabs with the shape needed and then took them over to my Diamond band saw and cut out the shapes.
The next step was to take those shapes and mount them on dop sticks with melted dop wax for shaping and polishing.
I then took the dopped pieces to my Eight inch All Diamond Flat Lap for shaping into Cabachons and for polishing. The All Diamond Flat Lap is a Lapidarians best friend because here you can start with a 100 grit Diamond lap for rough shaping and then change the lap to a different Diamond grit such as 350 grit and work down to a final lap of 1200 grit Diamond for the final step...note the small white cup above the Diamond lap..that is for water to flush away ground off particles of the gemstone and to also cool the stone and must be kept full and running all the time so the stone does not fracture from the heat of grinding.
The final step on these stones was to then give a final high polish with Zam on a Muslin Buff and they were then ready for mounting in the Bezels on the bracelet and using a Bezel rocker and burnisher to push the bezels down tight around the stones to hold them tight with out the use of any glue.
Since I could no longer look at the bracelet the way it was, I started to envision it with some other stones in it, I decided to cut and polish some very nice Arizona Turquoise that I had in my stash of rough Turquoise.
I had a very nice large piece of blue/green Turquoise with brown matrix in it so I decided to slab that up on my Diamond slab saw and proceeded to mark the slabs with the shape needed and then took them over to my Diamond band saw and cut out the shapes.
The next step was to take those shapes and mount them on dop sticks with melted dop wax for shaping and polishing.
I then took the dopped pieces to my Eight inch All Diamond Flat Lap for shaping into Cabachons and for polishing. The All Diamond Flat Lap is a Lapidarians best friend because here you can start with a 100 grit Diamond lap for rough shaping and then change the lap to a different Diamond grit such as 350 grit and work down to a final lap of 1200 grit Diamond for the final step...note the small white cup above the Diamond lap..that is for water to flush away ground off particles of the gemstone and to also cool the stone and must be kept full and running all the time so the stone does not fracture from the heat of grinding.
The final step on these stones was to then give a final high polish with Zam on a Muslin Buff and they were then ready for mounting in the Bezels on the bracelet and using a Bezel rocker and burnisher to push the bezels down tight around the stones to hold them tight with out the use of any glue.
Diamond Band Saw
Some of the sawn out pieces 1/4 inch thick
Diamond Flat Lap With 100 Grit Lap On
Diamond Lap With 1200 Grit On
View Of Bracelet With Mounted Stones
Another View Of Bracelet
1 comment:
What a huge improvement. Your so talented.
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