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.

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