\We FINALLY GOT into the club!!!    Early in the day, later there are people using many of these machines. Apparently come mid January, they will all be full.  We will be gone then though.  These are all belts, some diamond belts and other non diamond belts.(the diamond ones are more expensive, but cut through into rocks quicker)

Here is Ken, with all of his safety equipment on cutting a fire agate

You start with the 80 grit and work up to 600 grit.  What we were told is that the 80 grit you get down to what you want to see, and you use all the other ones to get rid of the scratches that the 80 grit makes.

You can see the fire inside in the top half, it is still pretty deep at this point.

sadly a few cracks, but we were really just learning how to use the equipment

Generally the way it works is that you will get the SAWERS… to cut you a slab from your rock. This is a rock that they have cut a few slabs for me.

The idea at “THE CLUB” is to make cabachons, like the ones shown here.  You start with a slab, then you draw a shape from a template, like the ones below, were oval shaped. There is another smaller saw that you cut roughly around your template to get a rough (oval in this case) shape.  You then use the belt sanders to gradually shape your stones into cabochons.

We aren’t totally into making jewellery, so we are just making shapes that we like the looks of,  like this one, perhaps we could make christmas decorations.

 

Yesterday we went in and just had some big rocks cut on the clubs big saw, they charge per cut, based on size.  These would need to be polished to bring out the beauty. These rocks each have a teensy bit of chrysocolla  in them (the teensy bright green spots)

and this one though quite ugly  on the outside………..

turned out to be the one that TURNED all heads at “the club” yesterday

quite the beauty…..

We DO have some of these machines at home, nice to learn more about how to use them, it will be a great pastime next spring.

Much love to all