Lapidary Fun In The Silver Valley (Or, Little Shop – No Horrors!).

I managed to quickly restart crafting only 2 weeks after my family landed in The Silver Valley. My key to doing this was fairly simple: I sequestered as much as I could of the most essential parts of my crafting in only 4 main boxes: Lapidary, Silversmithing, Kiln, and Clay/Glazes.

I made certain that for each box, I carried enough of the essentials to be able to restart that section almost instantly (with the caveat being a few hours of setup). Everything else was to be considered optional albeit pleasant to have available. I had to tell myself to be ruthless about this.

While packing and unpacking, I managed to persuade my family that I at least needed those 4 boxes to prevent a high chance of boredom over the summer. In turn, they did thier best to make those 4 boxes available for ready access almost as soon as we arrived.

We spent the better part of a week unpacking, and then resting. Later, I cleaned out my wife’s aunt’s shop to prepare for my crafting in temporary exile. Fortunately, I also was able to unpack about 5 additional boxes of supplies!

In just over weeks I was ready to spend some spare afternoons or evenings setting up some of my equipment and then playing with it.

What you see below has become one of my current favorite tools for lapidary: The Inland Three in One Trim Saw:

I love the Inland trim saw!

With a little bit of patience (and the willingness to abuse the tool by operate the blade bare, applying lots of water using hand towels rather than a drip) this trim saw can cut apart an entire 6 inch geode I bought at a rock shop in Holbrook Arizona (left). Rotating the piece to be cut on top of the blade is a bit riskier to your blade and to your safety, so be ABSOLUTELY sure to be attentive, aware, and unbending during the critical instants of cutting.

After this operation, the blade still has plenty of diamond covered edge remaining for cutting the rind off the pieces (middle) into useful bits such as rock crystal and colored chalcedony (right), as cut more conventionally with the trim saw cover and drip feed reinstalled.

Cutting apart a blue geode.

On a completely different note, one of the boxes I was able to recovered contained some clamps and a few odds and ends, such as the glass platen I recovered off of a Canon photocopier. I did this based on the advice of a crafter from Spencer, Idaho… who suggested that I have some plate glass available for grinding the epoxy off some opal starters using 1200 grit diamond paste.

The picture therefore shows an example how any resourceful crafter can obtain necessary supplies from the most unlikely sources simply by paying attention to where the junk is and by understanding what is in the junk by how the junk works. And there are no sharp edges on this platen.. and the platen cover provides a nice padded support for the glass.

Back of copier platen provides safe, free, polishing glass.

Lessons Learned:

1) Be ruthless with yourself when moving. Keep essentials in as few boxes as possible for fast unpacking. Be willing to wait weeks to unpack the rest… and it could even be ready for you sooner (
and you won’t use at all much of your family’s goodwill)!

2) Be extremely careful when opening geodes with a trim saw. You will need to provide much more than a drip feed for water, and you will need to remove the trim saw cover and apply the water manually with rags. Be prepared to lose several rags.

3) To avoid cuts on your fingers from safety glass bought from hardware stores for use as a diamond paste grinding surface, consider using a recycled photocopier glass platen.

‘Till next time!

Aulë