I Don't Like Dop Sticks

I have taken my first step towards making Cabochons :-)

You have already seen some beautiful photos I posted of the Cabs Dave has made. Well I'm making them as well now. I have watched and learned from him and started. Yes that does mean I am now hogging the Cabochon making machine (see picture) :-) but it's a lot of fun.

Ok so how it starts is that you cut the rough rock chunks into slabs, then shape them on the diamond wheel, then take it through the various phases of grinding down to a smooth finish. If done right you should end up with a perfectly polished piece with a mirror like shine. That's the general idea anyway.

Right, so some rocks were slabbed on the Saw and then they were ready for working on. Let’s get on with it then…. But I wanted to do Rose Quartz and Sodalite and these were not part of the slabs we had cut.

I have seen Dave spend hours on putting these slabs on Dop Sticks using wax. See picture of dop Sticks. He had a Rose Quartz and a Sodalite piece on two Dop sticks and he said I could use those. He’s nice like that :-)

But after going through the shaping process and putting it through the first belt I have come to the conclusion I DO NOT like Dop sticks. The stones I held in my hand shaped better and lost the flats and edges on them so much faster than the ones on the dop sticks. Ok so I don’t have pretty nails anymore because I had a special manicure on that beast above, and the finger tips skin is a bit broken. But the stones I held in my hand are shaping better and faster than the ones on the dop sticks. I feel more in control. So that’s the way forward for me.

No pictures of what I am making yet, hopefully the Cabs will be ready today and I can take some pictures and post them later. They have been through two stages so far and there are 4 more to go...

As for the nails, well I can always go to Fabulous Foils and get something really funky from there.