Hi Chad Thanks for the positive feedback. It is nice to hear that you found this video informative. I belong to a seniors lapidary club so I decided to share what I have learned from everyone in the club. Members of my club want to use this video as a training video for new members... so I guess they found it informative as well. 😊 I still need to do videos on cutting, trimming, drilling, and doping stones. Plus I would like to do videos on using vibration style polishers and a flat lap. Lately I have been doing videos on how I make Barn Board picture frames for my wife’s watercolours along with videos on using epoxy resin and woodturning so I haven’t done much with stone lately. My polishers are in the garage and I live in Manitoba Canada and my garage isn’t heated. The polishers do not work well when the water freezes. 😁. Hopefully this summer I will get these videos done. As for my polisher... it is home made. I bought it off someone whose brother was a welder and the brother made it for him. It is very heavy made from 1/4 inch steel. It originally had a 3/4 inch shaft which was causing vibration at the outside wheels so I modified it by replacing the shaft and bearings to 1”. This eliminated the need for bushings on each wheel since all of my wheels have a 1 inch hole. It runs much smoother now. I also added all of the plumbing and taps over each wheel. I use a pail of water and a small fountain pump to supply water to each wheel. The pail of water will last a couple of hours. The tray drains into another pail. The valves make it easy to control the flow. The original method was a splash pump that could be placed under the wheel in use and it bubbled water onto the bottom of the wheel. I added a couple of polishing wheels onto the shaft to give me ten wheels, which I picked up from Diamond Pacific in Barstow when we were on holiday a couple of years ago. I have 6 inch wheels, but 8 inch would have been nicer. Unfortunately 8 inch wheels will not fit on my polisher. The larger radius is better. The surface speed is higher for the larger wheels, and it is easier to polish flat surfaces. I am glad you liked my wife’s artwork. If you want to see more you can check out her art on our website. LizArtCreations.com I created the website but as of this posting I still have to update her watercolour paintings on the site once we get them matted (another KZfaq video to do) . The sandcarving, and wood turning pages also need to be updated. Being retired means “Never having enough time, and too many things to do”! 😁

@@liz-artcreations6633 Thank you for that wonderful and informative reply. You have some machine there that's for sure and to hear it's one of a kind is no surprise, I'm a bit envious lol. I should join a lap club around these parts but there's not much going on as far as I can tell, I do have a friend a couple towns away who's in a couple different stone and mineral clubs around here, I'm sure some of the members are lab enthusiast. I look forward to watching some of your other videos and I'll certainly check out your wife's art website I really enjoyed seeing the pieces you showed at the end of the video. :)

It was Aluminum Oxide.

Sorry for the delay in my response. We are preparing for an art show and I have been busy making frames, matting and mounting paintings, and updating our website. All of our lapidary equipment is used. We got started when we joined a seniors lapidary club and we all shared the equipment at the club. I bought my polisher from a fellow that wasn’t using his and the seniors in our club were always happy to sell their personal equipment they weren’t using for a reasonable price to people who would enjoy and make use of it. I did buy a new tile saw from Harbour Freight and I bought a better quality diamond blade for it which I use for cutting slabs. I mounted a cheap vice on the tile saw to hold the stones. Once the weather warms up I will be making more videos of how I do my lapidary work. I do my slab cutting outside because it is messy on a tile saw but the water in the saw has a tendency to freeze at -30°C. We had a chilly winter this year. If you do a google search for lapidary, or rock and gem clubs in your area you may find sources for equipment, mentors, and friendly people.

It really is not that difficult providing the minerals in the stone are the same hardness. When you get different hardnesses in the stone the soft sections grind down faster than the hard areas. Then it is challenging to get a consistent shape. Sounds like I should do a video on sharpening. I sharpen lots of different tools for my wood turning... including drill bits.

I have the original slab which is a beautiful tiger eye but this was a partial end piece that wasn’t cut at a good angle to the grain in the stone. I used it to show the process in the video rather than show the quality of the stone. When I get back to doing some lapidary I will likely cut the rest of the stone properly and polish it and then append it to this video. This year I have been busy building a wood fired pizza oven and doing forging, welding, and wood turning for the tools and doors. I plan to do a video where I incorporate wood turning, resin, and lapidary in a project but I need to finish my current projects first. I plan to make some more lapidary videos to show cutting, dopping, and polishing methods using tumblers and flat laps. There just aren’t enough hours in the day. Hopefully I will have a descent tiger eye to show in the future.

@liz-artcreations6633 in my opinion though, Blue Tiger Eye, Red Tiger Eye, or hybrids of Yellow, Blue, Red are all way better than your average yellow Tiger Eye, unless it's that bright Yellow "honey" Tiger Eye that has a high translucency to it

It sounds like you have a really nice selection . I only have yellow and blue tiger eye.