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Post by Bluesky78987 on Jan 25, 2017 10:53:25 GMT -5
#4 could be tremolite (asbestos). I've seen it some astoundingly chatoyant material cabbed, and yes it's very soft. Wear a mask! Cool, Thanks! Maybe we'll know better after I cab it.
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Post by Bluesky78987 on Jan 24, 2017 16:44:01 GMT -5
Congrats Tommy!
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Post by Bluesky78987 on Jan 24, 2017 16:42:40 GMT -5
Cool, thanks Roy.
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Post by Bluesky78987 on Jan 24, 2017 16:41:19 GMT -5
I don't sell mine. For personal use, I only polish the back once I decide to set it and if it's going to be an open back setting. Otherwise, no way. Way too much of a pain in the ass. If you're selling though, I would think polishing (at least up to 1200) would increase the saleability enough to make it worthwhile.
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Post by Bluesky78987 on Jan 24, 2017 16:28:11 GMT -5
Very fun! Great to start with nice material like you're doing.
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Post by Bluesky78987 on Jan 24, 2017 10:50:20 GMT -5
Hmm. If you took that rock and sliced it paralell with the layers, rather than across, might produce something similar to what I have. Thanks for posting those!
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Post by Bluesky78987 on Jan 24, 2017 10:48:02 GMT -5
Great avatar too!
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Post by Bluesky78987 on Jan 24, 2017 10:47:24 GMT -5
Sweeeeet setup! I'm so jealous! Oh and your saws are way too clean though.
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Post by Bluesky78987 on Jan 23, 2017 16:01:36 GMT -5
All beautiful! I love seeing our local material made so beautiful.
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Post by Bluesky78987 on Jan 23, 2017 15:50:59 GMT -5
Interesting, Thanks. "Snowflake Agate Oregon" totally stumps google, which is a rare thing these days! And thanks Shotgunner, interested to see the comparison.
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Post by Bluesky78987 on Jan 23, 2017 15:48:40 GMT -5
Glad it is useful!
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Post by Bluesky78987 on Jan 23, 2017 11:17:05 GMT -5
Thanks to those who chimed in on my other thread about what indoor trim saw to get. I ended up ordering the 4" Ameritool, plus a 5" BD303c (.02) blade, from John/JSGems. The saw has a 5/8" arbor - convenient for the BD blade - no spacers needed. I got the one without the vice. www.ameritool-inc.com/store/index.cfm/product/1/lapidary-trim-saw-4-inch.cfmThe saw has the same look/feel as the Ameritool flat lap - grey plastic, rounded corners, lightweight but not too lightweight. The blade they include with it is a superthin blade - definitely get a thicker blade such as the 303c blade, which is about right for sawing most things anybody on this forum would want to cut. Some thoughts: (where I compare to the tile saw, I am referring to the MK145 with the same BD 303c blade (4" version).) Power: The saw seems to have good power for its size. At 3500 rpm (max), it cuts slabs (I cut onyx, chrysocolla, montana agate, laguna agate) very fast - probably 90% as fast as the tile saw, which cuts all rocks like butter. Faster than the trim saws at our club (which, admittedly, suck). I could bog it down by pushing harder if I tried, but there's no reason to try. The thickest slab I cut was 1/2", on the needles blue agate with pretty hard but not agate matrix, and it did fine. Oh, also, unlike the tile saw, variable speed. I only used it at max speed (I wonder what speed the 5" 303c is designed for? BD's website doesn't say.) Noise: It is almost silent running at max rpms, until you start cutting. When you cut, I'd say it's still pretty quiet - there is enough noise that I had the thought "I wonder if my neighbor can hear this through our adjoining wall? Eh, probably not or not annoyingly so." Less noise than my high speed blender by a lot. It makes about 10% of the noise of the tile saw. The cats didn't even look up from their naps 6 feet away on the couch. One could theoretically dial down the rpms if you wanted it to be quieter. Overspray: None. The instructions are careful to say exactly how full to fill the reservoir, and that filling it more will just increase the overspray without doing any good. It also has a little spray guard on the front which I didn't really need to use. I was standing in front of it wearing a grey sweatshirt to easily show water drops, and there were none after I cut out about 6 preforms. You do need to keep a measuring cup of water at your elbow to top up the reservoir every few preforms. Blade height: With the blade guard in its normal position, there was about 3/4" of clearance. By raising the blade guard (which doesn't have an obvious knob to lock it in different positions - I think it has a screw though), you could theoretically cut about a 1.5" rock, but that might become a power issue. With a 5" blade. Table: The table is great. It just lifts out of the well. The table top sits up above the gutter (like a mesa above the desert), so it is easy to clean, and the rims don't impede your hands or the size of the slab you're cutting. It has gutters to collect the chips, although the chips never really made it to the gutters, they just stayed on the table, so I found myself using a paper towel to wipe the table down after each rock. The top of the table is smooth, no grooves, so the chips were a little more annoying than the tile saw. Also, the smooth table made lining up the cuts a little trickier than the tile saw, which has grooves and an alignment marker, so I'll probably scratch/melt a line into it at some point to help on precise cuts. Edited to Add: I just encountered one disadvantage. The table isn't *quite* as high (by just a hair) as the lip around the edge of the gutter. So on side view it looks like this: This isn't great because if your slab is long, it can't lay flat on the table. I'll probably grind that lip down a hair soon. Silly design flaw. Blade slot size: Not sure the right word for that. The opening in the table top the blade sticks up through. The slot is very narrow - only about twice the width of the .02 blade. And the .02 blade sits up against the right hand side of that, almost touching but not quite. Much narrower than on the MK145, which has at least 1/8" of clearance. This is fantastic because it means that you can slice very narrow slivers of rock (like for intarsia) and not worry about them falling down beside the blade into the well. Unexpected bonus. Cleanup: I'd give the saw a medium grade for ease of cleanup. You need to empty the well after each session (or remove the blade). The well itself doesn't lift up, so you need to tilt up the whole saw (easy) and pour the water out. This is where I found the only annoyance with the saw - they didn't design the lip to pour well. It's like pouring with a coffee cup as oposed to a measuring cup. Water/sludge dribbled all over the place, so you need to pour into a LARGE container - one as wide as the saw itself, even though you're only pouring out like a cup or cup and a half of water. Sucking the water up with some sort of syringe, and then wiping the sludge with a paper towel might be more effective in the future. The well is nicely shaped following the curve of the blade so there aren't any nooks and crannies or corners for sludge or chips to get stuck in (I'm talking to YOU, MK145!), and this also reduces the amount of water needed. It would just be nice if they had either added a drain or shaped the lip so it would pour better. Finally, since the table completely lifts out, you can just carry it over to your water source of choice and hose it down. So that's good. Edited to add: Pouring from the corner works a lot better. Not completely perfect, but much more workable. Overall, I'm very pleased. Once I get a better cleanup system worked out, I will be thrilled!
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Post by Bluesky78987 on Jan 23, 2017 10:30:00 GMT -5
Thanks all. The dealer said #4 was Arizona Tigereye . . . but it doesn't look like the piece I got from Tony awhile back or anything Google turns up.
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Post by Bluesky78987 on Jan 22, 2017 12:46:32 GMT -5
Ok here's an update on Royston. I spoke with Dave Otteson (I think Dave) at Pow Wow. He said they just closed it for now, and that I should call him around May (when he's out mining) if I want a tour. So I guess it has gone from "official tours" to "call and maybe you can get a tour". So all hope is not lost!
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Post by Bluesky78987 on Jan 21, 2017 16:20:08 GMT -5
Hi all. Some of these I just thought were interesting to show you, some the dealer didn't know what they were. Pictures are all taken wet. 1. Needles blue agate. Came out a too green in the pic - the agate part is really more blue and the matrix is more brown than orange. My camera was accidently set on "vivid" color mode. First time I've seen it in the flesh. 2. Unknown agate - going to back this one with basanite and work around that healed fracture. 3. What kind of green jasper? The white lines look kind of like the feather markings in Jade, but I know it's not jade. Doesn't really look like plasma agate - the white lines are more, I don't know, intersections of green with green than a whole separate material like plasma agate. 4. This is an odd one. Hard to photograph - the slab was polished. It looks black, with these dark red/brown chatoyant fibers/veins. Scratches very easily with a pocket knife. Any ideas? 5. Unknown little guy with red plumes. White part is Translucent toward the top. 6. Fun little wood from somebody's dollar bin. 7. Is this what I hope it is? The price didn't reflect that, but it looks an aweful lot like Hell's Canyon . . . 8. Shrink wood, ain't she purty? Supposedly "bog wood from Minnesota" but I'm skeptical. 9. Chrysocolla in something. Gonna have to back it and maybe opticon it (gotta learn how to do that).
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Post by Bluesky78987 on Jan 20, 2017 15:53:12 GMT -5
Beautiful! I love seeing before and after pictures.
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Post by Bluesky78987 on Jan 20, 2017 15:51:47 GMT -5
Fun stuff! I like the aussie opalite best too.
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Post by Bluesky78987 on Jan 20, 2017 15:50:02 GMT -5
Thank you. It is really a great example of that particular type of stone. You should have heard me when I saw it in the slab bucket. The dealer, who sort of knows me by now, said "I have something new and awesome this year but I'll let you find it yourself." As I made my way down the row of buckets, I was like, "Cool, lapis. Neato, crazy lace. Nice, Amy Sage. and WHAT IN THE HELL? IS? THIS AMAZING STUFF? ?" They heard me all over quartzsite I'm sure. Little finds like this are one of the things that make this hobby so much fun.
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Post by Bluesky78987 on Jan 20, 2017 15:46:37 GMT -5
Hi Erich. I use a suede lap on my Ameritool. I like the variable speed for polishing, but it's not essential. Use what you have. I've only really ever used 14k diamond, although I own some 50k diamond that I should probably put on a different buff and try. Before I got the leather pad, I was using the felt one that came with the Ameritool. It worked fine.
My methodology is to charge the pad with little dots of diamond paste - maybe a total of a pea size blob of paste in total - and spread it around with my finger. Then I set the lap spinning, and give it one QUICK squirt of the silicone lube recommended above (not sure I have the exact same brand - it's just automotive silicone spray lube). Just a tiny squirt. (It smells really nice by the way!) I can do 3 or 4 cabs before it's time for another tiny squirt of lube.
From my research, I've concluded that most folks say Diamond seems to work on just about every stone. The other polishes might be slightly better for different stones (like if you do a ton of turquoise or jade or opal, do more research and get whichever one is best for those), but if you want to keep it simple, just get diamond polish (it's not so expensive, you don't use much).
I think you should be fine with your setup - you're probably using too much extender if your cabs are getting oily? That's just a guess though. With the silicone spray, if I use too much, the stones get really slippery and not very shiny. Not enough, and like they said above, the pad gets grabby. Maybe make a couple of test cabs of the same material to compare different amounts of extender.
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Post by Bluesky78987 on Jan 17, 2017 16:18:46 GMT -5
I'm heading out early in the morning for Pow Wow. I'll look for you Mark.
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