Cabochon Machine How-to

My favorite part of making jewellery is the lapidary work.
Cutting, shaping and polishing semi-precious stones.

Quartz, Rhodonnite, Dolomite, Feldspar , Tigers Eye, Moon Stone, Jade, Garnet.
I love my stones, rocks and crystals & I love the I have a chance to work with them so up close and personal.

Here are all of the steps needed to make a basic Cabochon stone just in case your curious about lapidary Art.




Step 1. Pick Your Rock Slab.

 Blue Moon Stone

Step 2. Choose Your Frame.

Various new & Antique cabochon frames.

Step 3. Size & Mark The Stone.

Finding and  the appropriate size and tracing the outline with an aluminium pencil on both sides.

Blue Moon Stone with Cabochon outline.

Step 4. Table saw.

Home made table saw used to cut stones.

Cutting the stone into a smaller, more manageable size to work with.

The Last cut for the second stone.

 Step 5. Cabochon Machine.Filing Down.

The Cabochon machine.

Using A Cab machine to file down the side of the stone to the shape traced onto the stone.

Step 6. Wax & Stamp.

Melting wax(like the type used to seal envlopes) .

Lightly heating up the stone and stamping the stone to a wooden dowel.

Step 7. Cabochon machine. Final shaping, creating the dome, buffing and polishing.

This Machine has 6 blade as well as a polisher.
Time must be spent on each blade and polisher in order to get the desired effect and glossy finish.

Step 8. Removing the left over wax.

Heating the stone and removing the wax.

Step 9. Placing the stone into its frame

Blue Moonstone and Cameo.
It's for a wedding.
Vale & hair clip will be added later.

There you go, step 1-9.

Here are some other examples of what can be done with the cabochon machine.

Lava Glass.

Rhodonite.

Selinite Wand.

Tigers Eye.

Tigers eye and iron ore.
Antique western bow-tie.

If This Floors Not Fu**ed Now It Will Be

Bead Rocks floor was getting pretty bad.

The previous shoppe was a skateboard store and ruined parts of the floor
Beth and I came up with an obvious solution
Spray paint!



We decided to spray paint on a carpet, here`s how it went ; )

Setting the tape and testing out the colours of paint we bought

We decided to give the floor a hammered look
letting out our frustration with the floor at the same time .

Here`s part of a design I did
Its no carpet but it covers up the mark 

Beth, putting on the frill.

Finished!

4 Hours of Painting, it was a lot and it was well worth it

Garage Sale & Wholesale

Saturday September 10th.

The Shoppe I work at " Bead Rock " had a huge garage sale.

For two weeks we did nothing but pull out old bins and containers crammed full of old projects and half used items.

We had over 300 baggies, strands and mismatched pieces of jewellery. 

-Organized
-Priced
-Some was put into loot bags
- The gems were kept away for use at a later date of course ; )
It was a hell of a job, but we did it : ).

Lots of hype, people, sales, and new customers 

Garage sales kick ass we made a killing just off stuff that was lying around.

The old stocks gone, time to start-a-new

September 12th

Beth Bianchi (my boss) & I hit up a few wholesalers today.

We havnt been in one month, which is rare for us. Usually we go ever two weeks.

Stocked up on lots of new stuff.

Shopping for new products isnt all fun and games.

It's actually hell after a while.

A football sized storage room, filled with bins of every type of jewellery component you can imagine.

Each bin reaching about 6 feet high.

Its hard on the knee's thats for sure.

15 rows of this, it never seems to end

They have a few nice crystals there to!

After this wholesaler we hit up another one.

We stopped just as the sun was going down and got a bite to eat

Had to refuel before heading home.

A nice cold beer and the sound of my pillow hitting my head are all I think of right now.

What a day what a day

September 8th/9th

September 8th
I opened up the store at 11 am
I had the urge to try out the new spray paint we bought ;)
So heres the story people; Bead rock had a dead bush , it was orange. I tried to bring it back to life more than once but the thing was totaled.
Water, Quartz crystals, talking to it, and every energy healing had no effect.
Beth and I decided to spray paint it.
Saphire blue, blue, silver and black.

It turned out pretty nice actually

Also , our bench outside the shoppe was looking like crap to, so i went to town on it.
Got a few weird looks from people
I was the local nut job , spray painting a bench and tree with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.

September 9th
Was a good day.

Managed to get a lot of my errands iv been pushing off all week done today.

Fridays at Bead Rock are great. Its a an "open house" day. People pop in for a few hours to work on different projects, show us what they have made & we all pitch in and help each other out.

Got into the shoppe around 3 o'clock only to find all the regular friday gal's there .

(left to right; Beth, Par, Carrol , Sue, Dianne , & Barbra)



Getting Ready for the Garage Sale on Saturday
All I have to say is Holy Princess Diana, Mother Teresa ...we have so much product/old stock to get rid of.
Two days of non stop going through bins, going through the basement, seeing what we need and what we don't and labeling everything by price
Lots of old stock being put on sale for cheap.
I really hope it goes over well today.


Anyways, im beat. Time for bed soon
I thought I'd show off my latest "masterpiece"
I call it "perfect" . Im thinking of charging $400-$600.
Thats a good deal right?

Whats In whats out.

Attended the "Mode Accessories Show. Fall/Winter" and the! "Toronto CGTA Gift Show".

Learning the ins and outs of the marketing and product world.
So many things at amazing prices..its where all the retail stores shop for new product.
Knowing the actual prices for store items before mark up is making me never want to shop again.

Lots of Jewellery at the mode show.
Ill just say this; didn't like a lot of what I saw.
Getting to all the new designs was good because ill have a bit of a heads up for what's to come.
I'll make a piece or two from what inspired me
if it sells:awesome
If it dosnt: ill just take it apart and make something else.

Time to eat and do house hold chores iv been neglecting all week.

P.s.
Beth is back! ;)

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What a week.
Beth has been on vacation so it's been myself , Carroll, and Kathy to look after the store.

Iv been feeling under the weather for the past two days. Luckily I have some colloidial silver to help combat the cold.


Schedule;
-This afternoon I'm teaching "The Tree of Life" to three people.

-Tonight I'm teaching a wire wrapping and pendulum making class to 19+ women in whitby at tranquil gardens.

-Tomorrow; Gotta wake up early and head to the fairview centre in whitby for a huge garage , jewellery and art sale. Later on; special sale,demo and promotion day aside the ice cream shoppes promotion day.

Sunday ; bbq at a friend whom has some of mine and my bosses Jewellery in there store.

Monday; Beth and I are going to the Mode Show in the west end of Toronto.

So much to do. So much fun :)

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My second and third day off

I had some cash on me and wanted to check out some new places for supplies. I thought "what the hell why not hit up the industrial area and see whats good".
All I will say is; lot's is good ; )

12:00 am Wednesday: A friend from work and I headed up to Bancroft for the annual Gemboree.
arrived at 4 30 am, slept in the van , and got up around 8 am to head to the show
Crystals, minerals, raw metals, so much of everything I love. It was in heaven.
Not to mention I had the pleasure of meeting a friend who I'v been talking to for around 2 years now online. We've made several attempts to meet before, but for some reason or another fate only had us meet today at the show.


At home , tired... decided to tidy up the room. I stopped once I found a journal from last December/January/February.
The not book consisted of a daily writings and design in which I wanted to create but did not have the skills or material to create up until now. Every design but one has been finished, which I hope to complete in the near future.
Our subconscious minds are a miracle.
Never forgetting, constantly working and improving until the idea is complete and ready to be brought to the conscious state.

Emotionally and physically I am all healed and rejuvenated
ready to get back to bead rock and get some shit done!

First post. Our "day off"

Today the store (Bead Rock) was closed.
Beth (my boss) , and john (a friend) headed to two wholesaler's in the city.
From 11 am until 5 Pm we shopped.
A lot of you probably think that shopping for jewellery and art supplies for 6 hours would be a blast..but ill be honest with you, its really not after the first two hours.
Beth will be leaving on vacation next monday for one week, we had to make sure we had enough of everything.
I really cant wait to see what happens while she is gone, it will be a lot of pressure on myself and a few others who help out with the store. but none-the-less it will be good pressure and a good learning experience.

After shopping and dinner we headed out to the creek so John could teach us how to pan for gold.
We didnt find any gold but we did find lots of quartz.
Plus we know the basics of gold panning now so were free to try it out again.

This week isn't going to be the norm;
Getting ready for Beth leaving
Setting up classes
Getting all the new product out
And dealing with my injury.

This was also the first day of the government program through Northern Lights.
They will be paying me $10.50 an hour for 30 hours per week, for 8 weeks.After that I will be doing an apprenticeship which has even more bonuses for both Beth and I
Another perk is that social services will be giving me a big hand out as well as an intensive to do well at this job.
Clothes, supplies needed to do the job, bus pass, and as few other random things.
I am the first person in Durham and probably the GTA who has a done a program like this for working at a jewellery store so its considered uncharted territories to them. They better chart them fast because im not waitin'!