Studio Photos

Here are some shots of my studio with the big front door (garage). I have it crammed with lapidary equipment and jewelry equipment and of course lots of rocks! Click on thumbnails to expand.

Here's my bench. Messy as usual.

Here's another cluttered work area. My flat lap is in the lower right.

Here are the rotary and vibratory tumblers. I have the capacity to rotary tumble 48 lbs of stone at a time. The rotary tumblers is where the initial shaping of the stones and flats take place. I discover a lot of my show piece stones that I use in my jewelry by the tumbling process. I never know what I'm going to find when I open the barrels up every two weeks to clean them out. I use 60/90 Silicone Carbide grit only in the rotary tumblers. The finer grits and polish are used in the vibratory tumblers on the right.

Here is a shot of two 10 lb batches in the vibratory tumblers. The bottom tumbler has stones, flats, and cabs in the final grinding stage. I use 120/220, 600, and 1000 Silicon Carbide grit in the final grinding stages. The tumbler in the upper part of the picture has 95 cabs that are in the final polish phase using Tin Oxide.

Here are is a 6 inch rock saw and a 10 inch rock saw. The 6 inch saw is used for cutting small rocks or cutting up slabs into cab size pieces. The 10 inch saw is auto feed and handles rocks up to 4 inches. On the right is my 8" grinder where I do all the initial shaping of the cabs. I sand them to 280 grit. I don't over do the tumble finish on my cabs as some commercial cutters do which produces cabs with very rounded edges and dished in the back. I was a silversmith before I got into lapidary, so I cut my cabs like I would like to have them cut for setting into bezels.

Here is my 18" Highland Park rock saw. It is a workhorse that can handle rocks up to 8 inches. I use a thinner kerf blade so I can cut slabs on this saw without much waste.