Lapidaryforum.net
Rock Art => Cabochons, Intarsias, Cameos => Topic started by: Kaljaia on July 20, 2016, 10:00:45 PM
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Not entirely sure where to post this! But at this stage it's kind of like an intarsia maybe??
A bunch of years ago I dug through everyone's $1 bins at Madras rock show and bought about $15 worth of red jasper slabs of varying quality, thickness and size. I had no idea what I was doing and a lot of them are very pitted and thin, and a few with many fractures. So, practice rocks! The end goal was a small mosaic pattern, maybe a mini table top.
About eight years later, finally took a day and made step 1 happen. I created the geometric pattern in Illustrator, printed it, cut each piece out and glued them to the rock with water-soluble craft glue. Then cut each one out on a trim saw and soaked off the paper. Only had one catastrophic mis-cut, though I did lose a few corners and predict I'll lose more in the polishing stage (which will happen in a tumbler). I'm a sculptor, not a quilter; my mother would be scandalized by my corners.
The white star in the middle is all stone gifted by a fellow forum member. 'sow belly' and 'mud springs' agate, and one that was labeled in orange pen but the writing had come off. There's one more segment to the pattern, a black border, which I'll make out of the black jasper I get here. That'll be next week's town trip to have slabbed at Richardson's. End goal is to grout it in black and adhere to tile backer board, after tumbling the pieces. Turquoise chips may also be involved, if I can find that vial of them...
This is an experiment and my first time trying any of this! I would welcome feedback on any step.
(https://67.media.tumblr.com/95508be80e0838c1d8dac36f3fdbf4fd/tumblr_oanf1gBtEV1spns93o2_1280.jpg)
(It does all line up better than the picture would indicate.)
(https://67.media.tumblr.com/ef95d9c6e1fb7c09ec9d1c08cafcc0f7/tumblr_oanf1gBtEV1spns93o1_1280.jpg)
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A couple of thoughts, The pieces will adhere better before they are polished. Maybe consider laying the pattern up in the rough and then running it down on a high speed dry polishing set up or on a flat lap to minimize chipping and such. If you can get a good set on it you should be able to grout it after the polish run to get some relief to the grout joints.
Also, not sure of the scale but wondering the overall size of the piece.
Disclaimer... I have never done anything quite like this so these are just thoughts/ideas.
It looks like fun,
Best,Bill
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Hi Bill,
Thanks for the feedback- I need to look into flat laps.
At this time the extent of my workshop is a trim saw with a 7 inch blade and a two-barrel tumbler, so I'm working with what I have! But I agree that the stone will adhere better rough and would like to use that method in the future.
I'm sorry I did not include a scale bar. Each of the star segments is as long as my thumb and the whole pattern is about seven inches across.