Cyclops Contact Lens...

[mohs]

Alright lapidary pals

Explain this trick to me



Neighbor owns it
Doesn’t know where it came from



To me --it seems to be ---
natural agate
Brazilian ?


Its highly polished
inside the concave
&
outside on the convex
The girdle thickness is tits!~
(as in even across the whole form )



How was it cut?
How was it polished!

Thanks all!

Ed

[Mark K]

I don't know, but I found the part that is inside of her agate panties in CA.

[NRG]

The telescope makers make concave curves as normal business. They use a flat grinder and grit to make the inside curved. Its done painstakingly by hand the and result is a mirror with exquisite optical quality.

www.bbastrodesigns.com/JoyOfMirrorMaking/RoughGrinding.html

[mohs]

very cool NRG !
telescopic lens grinders
rock !~

ya know I have lot in common w/Spinoza
that sharp mind of the 17th century
poor boy in his room grinding lenses for a living
well I'm poor and grind but
the mind still bit rough
m stly

[Jugglerguy]

It looks like a giant contact lens. Don’t drop it, you’ll never find it.

[mohs]

Could of name it cyclops lens

but i had mermaids on my mind

m slty



cool

[zarguy]

I've seen stackable agate bowls like these.
I think they're made on a lathe.
A cutting tool can be made to cut a curve without wasting all the material between bowls.
I could be wrong, but that's how I'd do it.
Lynn

[MsAli]

Mar 7, 2018 16:59:03 GMT -5 mohs said:

Could of name cyclops lens
but i have mermaids on my mind
m slty

Part of her magic girdle? As Aphrodite did not wear a bra

[gemfeller]

It's probably one of the well-known agate bowls cut in Idar-Oberstein Germany. They've been making them there for well over 100 years, using Brazilian agate shipped to Germany by German immigrants.

They were originally cut with fairly primitive water-powered equipment. Now the process is very high-tech. I don't know exactly what current equipment is used but I-O is the source for large quantities of finished Brazilian agate objects.

www.google.com/search?q=brazilian+agate+bowls+idar+oberstein&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjhpO3MoNvZAhVD12MKHS0CBHMQsAQIKw&biw=960&bih=434

[mohs]

yep ali!
I've noticed that

in all the classical paintings of Aphrodite



and just to be fair



and don't get me started on the quest
for the lost wall size marble mosaic of
Beauty & the Beast
residing in some Venice museum...

[mohs]

Mar 7, 2018 17:27:09 GMT -5 gemfeller said:

It's probably one of the well-known agate bowls cut in Idar-Oberstein Germany. They've been making them there for well over 100 years, using Brazilian agate shipped to Germany by German immigrants.

They were originally cut with fairly primitive water-powered equipment. Now the process is very high-tech. I don't know exactly what current equipment is used but I-O is the source for large quantities of finished Brazilian agate objects.

www.google.com/search?q=brazilian+agate+bowls+idar+oberstein&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjhpO3MoNvZAhVD12MKHS0CBHMQsAQIKw&biw=960&bih=434

Thanks Rick!
I was thinking you'd probably have some insight

I'll check those sites out

hope it going well
Ed

[mohs]

[MsAli]

That is really pretty

[mohs]

yes it is!
an perfectly formed
it as me completely
flummox Ed
mohs

[fernwood]

That is very cool. Agree with the bowl response. Does it look like the center crystals fell out over time, or was it made like this?
A friend told me about some musical meditation bowls she was given. One set was the traditional, white cylinder type. The other set she said looked like "woks made out of agates". Your photos certainly show an agate wok.

[mohs]

O I'm pretty sure mrsfern
that the center
what the proper name?

is natural and intact

in example --I believe it was ground that way for effect
the hole was naturally there

[mohs]

I just hung it from wire and tap it
it rings like rock

[pauls]

The cutter for these is a saw blade that is dish shaped, (imagine say a half soccer ball on a shaft) several blades are stacked together on the shaft with a spacer between each equivalent to the thickness you want your little Agate bowl. The stone is held in a lathe type machine so that it slowly rotates, the cutter also spins like a diamond saw, but it also needs to cut in an arc as well, as the cutter cuts into the rock the axis of the shaft swivels and allows the dished blade to cut multiple dished slabs of rock.

Thats hard to describe but if you get it figured it's really simple. Much easier to describe with lots of hand waving.

There was a picture of the machine in a very ancient US lapidary magazine, probably 1970s. I did have it saved on my computer about seven computers ago, so it's long gone and I can't find the magazine either.

[mohs]

One of the strange aspects is that the rim
as the outer crust
Of the rock
That seems to preclude that it was ground aa a sphere first

Its like someone sliced a slab of agate
And molded it. Like glass.

Is it possible heat and bend agate?

[mohs]

mohs