Lapidary Studio

A Rhodonite cabachon that was cut and polished at a Lapidary 101 class.

What is lapidary?

The discipline of lapidary is primarily concerned with the cutting, shaping, and polishing of rocks, crystals, and gemstones. The tools in the shop can also be used to facilitate work in glass, ceramics, and jewelry work, though often there are better tools already available.

Materials

While we do welcome geologists to come use our tools, identifying rocks or gemstones is difficult without an expensive lab. As a result, it is more art than science when it comes to saying definitively if something you found in the woods or in your garden is an agate, calcite, or a diamond.

Generally speaking, almost any material is okay to try and use on our tools. The big exceptions are metals, plastics, rubbers, or highly radioactive materials. While our tools are all diamond-sintered or diamond-tipped, and can thus cut or grind anything on planet Earth, the substrates that the diamonds are on are a bit more frail. Metals can easily gouge the rubber backing on our grinding wheels; rubber and plastic will gum up the surface and reduce efficiency; and radioactive materials will reduce your lifespan!

If you found a rock on the beach and want to make it look pretty, bring it in. If you're a life-long rockhounder and have boxes of lakers you want to polish up, those are welcome too. Have a 600 carat diamond sitting in your junk drawer next to some AAA batteries? Bring that in and facet it into something gorgeous.

If you don't have your own stones to work with, or you want to practice on something before putting your own precious pieces into peril, the lapidary studio has about 15 buckets of stones available. What stones they are and how easy they will be to work is mostly unknown, but they're free!

Tools

The following tools are in the lapidary space, and are best used for the following functions.

Slabbing Saw - Good for cutting slices off of larger chunks for further refinement.

Trim Saw - Good for reducing a bit more material from a slab, or from pieces that are too thin to hold in the slab saw.

Gryphon Bandsaw - Good for cutting organic curves into a piece of stone, or taking corners off to help shape a piece faster before grinding.

Miniature Drill Press - Best tool for putting a hole in your piece, especially if you intend to thread cordage or wire through it.

Foredom Flexshaft - Rotary handtool that is useful for cutting, drilling, or grinding into a piece. Figurehead carving, hollowing out stones, or working inside corners are most easily done with this tool.

Cabachon Grinder - Good for working on large surfaces. Flattening cabachon backs, or putting rounds on show faces before further polish.

Genie or Lortone Grinding Systems - Where you will spend 80% of your time in the studio. These machines will grind, shape, and polish rocks to a beautiful luster, leaving a glossy finish if you are patient enough.

Gemstone Faceting Machine - A machine for grinding and polishing gemstones such as sapphire, amethyst, or garnet.

Dop Station - Warms wax to act as a glue between a work piece and a dop stick. Allows for more even control of the piece at the grinding wheels and allows you to keep your fingerprints.

Rock Tumbler - Toss in your rough stones, some water and abrasive media, and let it roll for a week or four and you will end up with smooth rocks. Saves you a trip to the creek in exchange for a few weeks of time.

Studio Etiquette

To utilize the space you must go through an orientation first and be checked off. The gemstone faceting machine has its own separate orientation as it is extremely involved and replacement parts are expensive.

Clean up the space after you are done. This includes emptying out any drainage buckets or water trays, wiping down tables of excess water, shutting water off to the foredom and cabachon machines, and turning the lights off.

If any tools break or are in need of maintenance, please leave a bork tag and notify the lapidary channel on Discord.

The gemstone faceting machine requires its own orientation to use, and takes about an hour to go through. You must also reserve your time on the machine through the Scheduler.

External Resources

Here are a few different resources that may be useful if you are new to lapidary, are curious about it, or are wanting to learn more.

The Gemology Project - a non-profit resource with a lot of information about gemstones, gem cutting, and an excellent resource for cut diagrams for gemstone faceting.

Random Trivia

Here are some random facts you can carry around in your head.

A carat is 1/5 of a gram. So that 600 carat diamond in your junk drawer only weighs 120 grams, or just over 1/4 pound!

Some stones, like Kyanite, have multiple hardnesses, and are softer in one direction than another.

Rubies and sapphires are both technically corundums, the color difference lies largely in the inclusions of the stone.

Minnesota's official gemstone is the Lake Superior Agate.