Purchasing Pink Opal

If you’re looking to buy some of this material, you can find it on Glenn’s online store at: www.gemstonegeeks.com. It’s fairly easy to see what you are getting, as this comes from a horizontal seam, and the sides of each stone show its contents. Whether you are looking for larger areas of pure pink, swirling patterns, or brecciated variation, the pictures online will show you what you will be getting.

How to Slab Pink Opal

Slabbing this material is fairly easy, but with all opals including Ethiopian opal, it can be on the brittle side. If you plan on putting the rough in a larger saw gripped by a vice, I would suggest using a sintered continuous rim blade that is as thin as you can get it. Cutting with an aggressive thinner agate blade could cause fractures and massive unwanted chipping.

I suggest hand cutting on smaller trim saws, with a thin blade and water instead of oil. Once I have cut each slab, I normally put the slabs in a bucket of water until it’s time to cut cabs from it. Otherwise, it seems to dry out and fractures can develop.

The brecciated variation is definitely a fan favorite, and you shouldn’t have any concerns about its stability. The chalcedony running through it holds the opal together nicely.

When starting the cabbing process, bench tests each slab to ensure it will be stable. Opal almost always shows fractures. Although most are superficial, parts may break off where there is a fracture that is not even visible.

Trimming Preforms

For the most part, trimming out preforms is easy, but I did lose a couple to fractured pieces. This didn’t hinder me from cabbing them, but it did force me to alter the shape of the cab. I may not have gotten the desired shape I originally intended, but the stone itself chose a shape for me, which always turns out beautifully. There’s nothing wrong with redesigning a cab on the fly when you lose a piece or a chip from your original design; the colors and patterns of this material will look great no matter what.

Cabbing Pink Opal

To start cabbing pink opal, I would suggest a well-worn and broken-in 80-grit steel wheel to gently grind out your shape. Note, that the lighter the color, the softer it is. The dark rose is fairly hard, and the light pink to white is fairly soft, so if your 80-grit is aggressive, then start on a steel 220- or even a 60-grit soft resin wheel.

Once your shape is obtained, dome the top with a soft 60-grit wheel, with lots of added water. It’s important to turn the water up when cabbing pink opal so that you don’t add any extra heat from the friction of the wheels.

From here, I typically use a soft resin 140-grit, to remove all the remaining scratches. Once you finish getting your cab smoothed out, and scratches removed, move on to the 280- then to the 600-grit wheel. At this point, your cab should almost look finished, by the time you reach the 1200-grit wheel, your cab will most likely have a mirror polish and you will have a finished cab. If there are still some slightly dull spots, you can move up to a 3k or 8k soft resin wheel and lightly give it a final polish.

This story about pink opal previously appeared in Rock & Gem magazine. Click here to subscribe. Story by Russ Kaniuth.

The post Pink Opal: What to Cut first appeared on Rock & Gem Magazine.

Making a Template

All of this motivated me to make a template with different sizes and shapes all based on the modified teardrop form. This is different than how to carve a heart shape. I had made individual template shapes before from a piece of 1.1 mm clear polycarbonate sheet plastic. Polycarbonate sheet is somewhat flexible, highly workable, and virtually unbreakable. I went to a local plastics supplier and got some 1/32” thick material. It was $4.50 a square foot.

I drew the first shape from the Cabtopia Big Flare template onto the sheet of plastic using an ultra-fine felt tip pen. I then used a circle template to draw multiple-sized circles on the template. I drew a dot on the template above the circles to indicate how tall I wanted the shape to be. Next, I used an outside curve from the Cabtopia template to connect the edge of the circle to the dot. Finally, I used the same template to draw the inside curve from the dot to the side of the circle.

I tried using a jeweler’s saw to cut out the shapes, but the tough plastic gummed up the saw blade and I didn’t have an appropriate depth saw or surface to work on. Instead, I used a 1/8” spiral cylinder metal bur mounted in a flex shaft handpiece to cut the shape by holding it under the template and pushing it up through the sheet of plastic. I then guided it around inside the drawn line.

When I finished using the bur, I filed the inside of the hole with a half-round file. For the “V” at the tip of the template, I used a knife-edge needle file to shape this area. The final step was to use a small square of 220-grit sandpaper to smooth the inside cut-out surface.

What Material to Use

When I completed all the new shapes on the template, I searched through my slabs for good candidates to use with the new template. It wasn’t difficult to find a lot of them!

I had a small geode slice that had an irregular center pattern that precluded using an oval, round, or rectangular shape, especially if I wanted to save the small round feature in the lower part of the desired pattern.

Another slab had the best pattern concentrated on the side that could only be captured by the modified teardrop shape.

The last slab I found had an ideal pattern on each side that I could use the largest template shape and capture two possible cabs from the slab. I found many future candidates for the template shapes. I’m going to be very busy for a while making my favorite modified teardrop shape.

This story about making a cabochon teardrop template previously appeared in Rock & Gem magazine. Click here to subscribe. Story by Bob Rush.

The post Making a Cabochon Teardrop Template first appeared on Rock & Gem Magazine.

I was given two templates that have become my favorites. They have some unusual shapes that I can use to alter, combine or use to enhance the cab shapes that I make. They are called Cabtopia BIG Flare and BIG Flame.

My favorite shape is the curving teardrop on the Big Flare template. My lapidary machine is an 8” diameter wheel unit. The inside curve on the curved teardrop shape is the same size as the 8” wheels, so making this shape is rather easy. When I shape the preform, I hold the stone vertically to grind the inside curve.

For this project, I used a slab of Brazilian Agate. The center of the slab is milky chalcedony surrounded by a band of red agate. As a whole, the slab seems rather unremarkable, with little color or pattern. When I first moved the curved teardrop template around, I found that I could isolate the red band quite well. The band would be the focus of the cab. Then I saw that I could capture more of the red band if I used parts of the template to extend the tip of the cab.

Using lapidary safety tips, I carefully trimmed the inside of the curve with the trim saw to help speed up grinding the inside curve. Because the trim saw blade is curved on the outside, the bottom of the cut extends beyond the top of the cut edge, so you have to be very careful making these cuts.

I finished grinding the inside curve by holding the cab preform vertically against the grinding wheel. Finishing the work on the preform involved utilizing the normal cab-making activities to bring it to its final shape and polished surfaces.

I found that using the template allowed me the opportunity to isolate and develop the beauty of a normally overlooked slab of Brazilian Agate. By using the template to expand on the shape of the tip of the preform I was able to capture more of the beauty within the piece.

This story about what to do with a cabochon template previously appeared in Rock & Gem magazine. Click here to subscribe. Story by Bob Rush.

The post What to Do With a Cabochon Template first appeared on Rock & Gem Magazine.

A Golden History

California has always had a deep history in gold, ever since the 1840s gold rush, where thousands came from all over the world to try and capture their fortune in gold. Though you might not hear about the gold rush in California much anymore, it hasn’t stopped. New claims are being filed each year, and many tourists still come to try their hand at panning gold to get the real experience.

Finding Embedded Gold

Recently, Shannon Poe from the American Mining Rights Association (AMRA), and his partners have been digging in the Screamer Mine near Angels Camp, California. Much of the gold there is embedded in large quartz specimens and it cannot be seen by the naked eye. They have uncovered quite a bit by using metal detectors and then bringing the material back to their shop and slabbing the rocks to see the gold veins run through the center of the quartz. The gold can then be run through the extraction process, or it can be utilized as lapidary-grade material. The slabs containing gold veins can be performed to design cabochons.

Tips For Working With Gold-Embedded Quartz

Although quartz isn’t very complex to work with, adding gold to the mix changes a few things in your setup. To start, quartz and most California materials are generally fractured and can easily fall apart at any time during the lapidary process. Stabilizing the material first is beneficial to ensure getting the most material to work with, without losing any from it falling apart either on the saw or when starting to grind performs.

Next, when cutting the quartz down, use the thinnest blade possible so that you waste very little of the gold content. At this point, you want to inspect all your slabs to ensure the stabilization process effectively filled any fissures in your material and that it will be solid enough to proceed to cab it. If there are open cracks, send it back for a second stabilizing treatment. At this point, be ready to trim out the cabochon preforms.

Cabbing the Quartz

Cabbing gold-embedded quartz adds a little more setup to your machine. This is where you want to completely clean out your cabbing machine and add material to the floor of your bays. Felt is a good option, it will allow the water to pass through it while it gathers all the grinding particles as you shape your cabochons. This way no gold is being wasted. It can be collected and processed at a later time.

Start the cabbing process on an 80-grit steel wheel. Cautiously grind the shape and dome. Continue to check often, as you never know how much gold will be in any area of the material and you don’t want to grind it away. Once the shape is complete, either uses a 140 or 220 soft resin diamond grit wheel to smooth it and remove any remaining scratches left from the course steel wheel.

From this point, continue to the 280 soft resin wheel, and continue to dry it off every so often to ensure all the scratches have been removed. The rest of the way is rather routine, from the 600 grit, all the way up to the 14k grit wheel. Once you’ve finished on the 14k grit wheel, it will be beautifully polished and not much else is needed but maybe a quick polish with either jeweler’s rouge or Zam with a felt tip Dremel bit.

This story about California gold previously appeared in Rock & Gem magazine. Click here to subscribe! Story by Russ Kaniuth.

The post What to Cut: California Gold first appeared on Rock & Gem Magazine.

Finding Hava Ridge Jasper

This material isn’t heavily available in the market as it’s a very new find but you can buy it directly from Nik on the Hava Ridge Jasper Facebook page. Each chunk of rough will vary in colors and patterns. If there are certain colors you are looking for, buying slabs might be the way to go. If you want a good assortment, I would suggest buying a few pieces of rough and experience slabbing this material yourself.

Starting to Slab

As you begin the slabbing process, this material usually doesn’t have much of a rind, so it’s best just to wash it off and pick which side you want to cut from first. As with some materials, there is a direction you want to cut to show the desired patterns, but with Hava Ridge, you can start at any angle and achieve nice results. With many of the rough pieces I have slabbed, after cutting the first end piece off, I usually choose to continue in that direction, or if it’s not the desired pattern, I will turn it and cut from another side.

Once all your slabs are cut and you are preparing your preforms, just note that Hava Ridge is a hard and very solid jasper, but it tends to have micro pits in it. These pits can be worked around, or even worked into your finished cabs, but if you want a flawless finish, you can stabilize or fill the surface area with epoxy before the cabbing process.

As with most porcelain jaspers, when shaping the preforms on the course 80 grit steel wheel, the back edge likes to chip on the edge. This will have to be addressed once you move on to the 280-grit stage and smooth the outer edge.

Cabbing Hava Ridge Jasper

Cabbing Hava Ridge is fairly easy, I shape and dome on the 80 grit steel wheel, and like to move on to the 60-soft resin wheel to quickly remove the deep scratches and flat spots. If you don’t use 60 grit, this can also be done with your 220-grit steel wheel, it will just take a bit longer. From there, you can go right to your 280 soft resin wheel to smooth everything out and make sure there are no scratches beyond this point.

Stopping periodically and drying it off will help find any remaining scratches.

Many times it can be hard to see them on darker materials and especially when they are wet. A trick you can use is to dry the cab off, find the scratches and mark them with a Sharpie pen. The ink will sink into the scratch, and as you continue to grind, you should grind the ink right off. It should be ready to move onto the 600-grit wheel to start the polishing stages.

To finish off your cab, work your way up from the 1200 to 14,000 grit wheels and this will yield a beautifully polished cab. If you’d like to take it a step further to gain more of a mirror polish, aluminum oxide on a leather buff, or Zam on a felt tip Dremel works wonders!

This story about Hava Ridge jasper appeared in Rock & Gem magazine. Click here to subscribe. Story by Russ Kaniuth.

The post What to Cut: Hava Ridge Jasper first appeared on Rock & Gem Magazine.

California plays host to many different varieties of brecciated jaspers. It’s a large region with well over 500 different faults, throughout four major geologic regions. The never-ending shifting of the earth constantly breaks the ground under our feet and creates beautiful jaspers for us to find.

Each region has its own type of brecciated jasper that comes from the minerals of the surrounding land. This makes each region’s jaspers differently colored, patterned, and unique. Lapidary-worthy specimens can be found from the desert to the coast, valley, and the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

Where to Look For Jaspers

Up north, between the towns of Williams and Stonyford, you’ll find Stony Creek Jaspers. These jaspers have beautifully colored breccia, as well as many poppy variations.

Most of these reside as alluvial stones found in local creek beds. Much can still be found at their source by hiking through the hills and hunting for the jasper outcroppings.

In the valley, you will find many world-renowned brecciated jaspers such as Stone Canyon Jasper. This is one of many in this region that runs from the valley down to the coast.

You can also find Jacolitos in this valley. Jacolitos contains beautiful arrays of golden colors and patterns you won’t see anywhere else.

If you continue your way to the coast, you can find many more variations in the Big Sandy Creek area. This a wonderful rockhounding site where you can find multi-colored breccia stones in the creek beds that run for miles.

The California coast also has a large variety of brecciated jaspers, such as those found at the Cayucos Beach area and a little further south at Avila Beach, where you can find the unique Deedeeite.

In the southern part of the state, the vast desert is a host to many different types of jaspers. One of the best rockhounding places in the state is in the Cady’s Mountain range between Barstow and Ludlow. Lavic Siding jasper can be found here, with its gorgeous layers of brilliant red colors. It’s a wonderful lapidary material to cut. Another great find is Chapenite out of Fort Irwin near Barstow.

With so many places covering the entire state, I would encourage lapidaries to pursue the enjoyment of hunting down and rockhounding their own material. That, in itself, is half the fun!

How to Use Brecciated Jasper?

All these materials can be cabbed in the same way. Most are around 5.5 on the Mohs hardness scale and are easily cabbed. This is great for beginners and lapidary experts alike.

Enjoy designing with all the different patterns, as each person will have a different perspective about what they see in each stone. The outcome is usually phenomenal.

The cabbing process starts with performing on an 80-grit steel wheel and progressing to the 14k soft resin wheel. This will yield a beautiful high-gloss polish to any of these jaspers. If you feel the need to try to gain that super mirror polish, you can use Cerium oxide on a leather buff, or hand polishing with Sam polishing compound on a felt Dremel bit.

Happy hunting and cabbing!

This story about California brecciated jasper appeared in Rock & Gem magazine. Click here to subscribe. Story by Russ Kaniuth.

The post How to Use Brecciated Jasper first appeared on Rock & Gem Magazine.

Where to Find Pink Natrolite

Pink natrolite is easily found. It is sold at rock shows and can also be found online. Most of this material is smaller-sized pieces under a couple of inches in either direction and relatively soft, about 4.5 on the Mohs scale. The one thing to look for when shopping for this material other than the pattern is its thickness. Always look at both sides and make mental notes of whether or not there will be enough material for a cab after the botryoidal backside has been sanded down flat.

Since this is a seam material, you won’t have to do any slab cutting. Instead, you’ll have to trim out your preforms and then sand the backside. This material comes quite often in curled pieces, not always flat, so you’ll have to make adjustments as to how to trim each preform so that you can get a flat-backed cab.

Cabbing Pink Natrolite

Once you have your preforms cut out and are ready to cab, natrolite is fairly easy to cab. Though it looks like larimar, it’s much softer and doesn’t break apart as larimar does. So, start on an 80-grit steel wheel to shape your cabs. Go lightly at first, get a feel for the hardness of the material, and then start doming your cab.

Many people like to use 220 “steel” wheels in their setup, but I like to use 140 soft resin diamond wheels before moving on to the 280 grit. It quickly removes deep scratches and takes much of the hard work away so that by the time you are ready to move on to the 280, the majority of your work is already done. At the 280 grit stage, this is where you need to make sure all the scratches are completely gone before moving on.

Checking Scratches & Finishing Up

With this material, it can be very difficult to see scratches due to the white coloring and radial crystal patterns, so it’s best to have a good light source in your shop and to dry off the cab thoroughly to see if the surface is scratch-free.

By the time you finish the 600 grit stage, you’ll notice a nice polish already appearing; it doesn’t take much to get a brilliant mirror polish on natrolite. Continue to the 1200 and up to 14k grit. From here, you shouldn’t have to go any further, and this should yield a beautifully polished cab.

This story about crystallized fossil clams appeared in Rock & Gem magazine. Click here to subscribe. Story by Russ Kaniuth.

The post What to Cut: Pink Natrolite first appeared on Rock & Gem Magazine.

QUICK TIP: When a slab has a uniquely shaped opening caused by the method of infilling in the rough, it’s got to try to incorporate it into the cabochon, especially when it will enhance the piece.

Utilizing an Interesting Feature

The plume agate pictured had a very interesting vug with a botryoidal inner surface. Finding these features when you are slabbing a particular rock is often an accidental occurrence, but it is a plus. I designed the cab so that the vug was positioned horizontally near the bottom, and it ended up well suited for my cab.

Obviously, wearing this cab as a pendant would not be the best choice because the background, whatever it is, would detract from the cab. Also, the cab’s translucency detracts from its potential beauty, so I decided to install a backing on the cab. My preferred backing is basanite, a black basalt. It is quite durable and takes a great polish.

Filling a Void

Even after selecting and polishing the basanite, there was still a void in the piece’s lower right side. I decided to embed a small round stone to fill the void. I struggled a bit in selecting the material to use, as I wanted something to enhance the cab. Then I remembered I had a few small fire agate pieces that might do the trick, but many of the pieces are very directional in their color pattern. I needed a piece that would exhibit its best color when it was hanging as a pendant. This necessity narrowed the choice of available pieces to just one. As I was grinding and polishing the piece, I rotated it under the light to make sure it would show well in all orientations. It did have some slight issues regarding orientation, but I made sure to mount it in the ideal position.

I used diamond wheels to recess the basanite area, where I intended to mount the fire agate. The basanite layer on the back of the cab is 3mm thick, so I recessed the stone 1-1/2mm. I wanted this recess to ensure the durability of the adhesion on the fire agate cab.

Jack-O-Lantern Appeal

As I was applying the epoxy 330 adhesive, I had to be careful to keep it out of the “window” area of the cab so it wouldn’t detract from the beauty of the stone. I think the final appearance has a Halloween jack-o-lantern look to it.

This story about how to make a jack-o-lantern cabochon appeared in Rock & Gem magazine. Click here to subscribe. Story by Bob Rush.

The post How to Make a Jack-O-Lantern Cabochon first appeared on Rock & Gem Magazine.

What are agates? Turritella agate has been known as such in the lapidary community for more than 50 years, however, the name is incorrect. Turritella is actually a sea snail. The fossil snails in Turritella agate are the freshwater snails, Elimia tenera. Since this popular name has been carried for so long it seems here to stay.

Finding & Slabbing Turritella Agate

This material can still be found and collected in the wild and is also easily obtained at shows and online sales. If you are making a purchase, it’s best to find the darker-colored matrix. The light gray matrix seems to be far more porous, pitty and crumbly. The darker portions are generally solid and take a far better polish. If you obtain rough material, there is a correct and incorrect way of slabbing it. The rough usually consists of flat seams with shells sticking out of the top and bottom.

To cut this material to get the best visualization of the shells within, you want to cut this material horizontally. If you can imagine a shoebox filled with drinking straws and cut it vertically in half, you will see nothing but a bunch of hollowed circles. This agate is much the same. The best way is to figure out the top portion and start slabbing lengthways, revealing all the cross-sections of the whole shells and not just the middle of them.

Trimming Preforms

Once you have slabs ready to trim out your preforms, designing with shells can be a lot of fun. Remember that these shells are generally not very big around. You may lose some of the patterns you are looking at in the slab once you start to grind your cab, so it’s best to start with the largest shells. One thing you will notice when cabbing this material is, it has a crude oil smell, because of its fossiliferous material, and it’s always best to wear at least an N95 mask while grinding this material.

Cabbing Turritella Agate

The cabbing process is fairly easy, I start with a steel 80 grit wheel to shape and dome my preform cabs, then move on to the sanding wheels. Whether you use a 140 soft resin wheel, or a 220, either will smooth out the cab and take out the majority of the scratches. From this point, move on to the 280 soft resin grit wheel, and be sure that you go no further until all the scratches are eliminated.

Depending on how silicated your material is, you may already start to see a nice polish developing. Other times you may have some porous areas that might not polish quite as well leaving some dull spots. This is fairly common. Continue to the 600 and 1200 and from here you will see the polish start to shine. I generally move up to the 8k grit and finish on a 14k soft resin grit wheel. This will leave you with a beautifully polished cab.

You can use a bit of Zam polishing compound on a felt polishing tip with your Dremel to obtain a higher polish if you wish. You will have a gorgeous piece of history embedded in your jewelry piece.

This What to Cut column about Turritella agate previously appeared in Rock & Gem magazine. Click here to subscribe. Story by Russ Kaniuth.

The post What to Cut: Turritella Agate first appeared on Rock & Gem Magazine.

Working With High-Contrast Rings

Sycamore petrified wood, in my opinion, is one of the more beautiful varieties because of its black color and high-contrast tree rings. Other petrified wood materials include Hell’s Canyon and Teredo. I recently learned a new technique from Roy Kessell, of R&B Rockshop, for prepping this material before cabbing it.

Once you get your slabs cut, you may think you have found some nice areas that will make good cabs; however, much is hidden in the black areas. Roy showed me that you can soak the slabs in bleach for two to three days to expose more of the tree ring patterns. This method is to be used to each person’s personal preference, so soak your slabs and check them each day.

Take them out, thoroughly wash them off and give them an hour to completely dry to see exactly how it looks. If you don’t get the desired look on the first or second day, put the stone back into the bleach, let it soak another day, and check again.

Once you’ve achieved the contrasting pattern you are looking for, start trimming out your preforms and start the cabbing process. Sycamore isn’t extremely hard; I’d say it’s about 5.5 to 6 on the Mohs Scale of Hardness, and rather easy to cab. Take your usual steps in the cabbing process and start to shape your cab on an 80 grit wheel. Once you have gone past the 220 up to the 280, dry your cab off and let it sit out, allowing it to completely dry before moving on.

Cabbing Sycamore Petrified Wood

This is where you need to recheck the pattern to see if you have ground off too much of the bleached pattern you prepped earlier. In a lot of cases, the bleach will only go so deep, and by the time I finished the 280 grit wheel, I had lost a lot of the contrasting colors I was looking for and had to go soak the cab in bleach for an additional day to get the desired pattern back. At this point, it’s safe to finish the cab through the rest of your cabbing process and not have to worry about any color changes.

When cabbing these types of black petrified woods, always dry the piece off after each stage and check for any white, hazing type of spots; this is where micro scratches are still showing and will continue to show unless you go back a step and make sure to get them completely out.

This is very important after completing the 600 grit stage. Not only dry off your cab with a towel but allow it a few minutes to air dry and check for any hazy spots or scratches.

The finishing process is fairly easy, even if your machine only goes up to 14000 grit; this should yield and very glossy finish. However, if you go as far as 50000 grit, you will definitely obtain a mirror finish and not have to go any further with polishing compounds. If you choose to use cerium oxide as your finishing polish, be sure to have a bowl of warm water and a toothbrush available to get out any polishing compound that may stick in crevices.

This What to Cut column about sycamore petrified wood previously appeared in Rock & Gem magazine. Click here to subscribe! Story by Russ Kaniuth.

The post Sycamore Petrified Wood first appeared on Rock & Gem Magazine.