Lapidaryforum.net
General Category => Contests => Topic started by: hummingbirdstones on December 02, 2016, 04:53:02 PM
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We're going to do a 2 month Outrageous Cab Contest this round. With the holidays (and winter), we're going to have less entrants if we just do December. So make your cabs and post them up to usher out the old year and ring in the new year!
Rules:
1) Cab must be made by you.
2) Cab must be made within the time period of this contest. Contest begins on the first of the month and ends on 11:59 p.m. on the last day of the month. NO pulling old cabs from your storage baskets!
3) As long as the basic shape is considered a cab it's golden. You can enter intarsias and carved top cabs such as cameos etc. After all, this is the OUTRAGEOUS cab contest! We love free form cabs! Pull out the stops and give us the best you have!
4) One entry per person please!
5) Please show photos of your slabs and preforms if you can so we can see your thought process and how you did things.
6) No finished jewelry pieces. Just the cab.
7) Cab sets are OK.
8) This is only for bragging rights and your cabochon photo posted up top in the forums unless someone posts a lapidary related prize and wants to ship it to the winner of the contest.
Let the games begin!!! :toothy10:
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A sphere to the winner! I'll ship this sphere to the winner of the December/January cab contest! Everyone needs a little roundness in their cab collection. 3 1/4" Septarian Nodule...
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Wow that's a great prize!!!
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Sweet sphere, and very generous...
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wow!!!
what an amazing prize. you sir are awesome!
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Holy Smokes! Ditto what everyone else said. I definitely MUST get a cab cut to enter this time! :WEEEE:
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With the holidays and winter I thought this would keep everyone interested. I'm going deep in my slabs to try and save shipping to someone else! LOL :blob1:
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if i cab up my slab i have here, that sphere is going to be beautiful on my mantle.
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Hi All
Wow that is a crazy prize :headbang: So Phish you think it is already yours? Well I will do my best to make a cool entry. After I finish cutting stones for Christmas that leaves me like 35 days to come up with something killer and I have an idea if luck and skill are in sinc :LOLOL: But I have to try.
Love this forum
Bless
Shawn
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BOY! THATS A SUPER PRIZE! I am going for this one, it would look good with my "Bubble Quartz" :laughing4:
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All I see is talk and no cabs! Where are the cabs?? Get cracking y'all! :whip2:
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:laughing4:
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All I see is talk and no cabs! Where are the cabs?? Get cracking y'all! :whip2:
I work too much and its friggin cold outside! :coffee1: :LOLOL:
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All I see is talk and no cabs! Where are the cabs?? Get cracking y'all! :whip2:
I work too much and its friggin cold outside! :coffee1: :LOLOL:
if you mean cold as in -10to -20F below I can see about the cold. If not, I can gladly send you some cold!.
I'll see what I can find for this contest. I have a lot of slabs, I just need to dig up the ones I want to cab!
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You guys can keep your winter cold! I've been pissed that I have to put on a jacket at night the last month or so (and my jacket goes on when the mercury dips below 50). I have no weather excuses for not getting a cab done yet, simply holiday related ones. I'm fixing a Christmas gift that my wife ordered but it got screwed up (I'll share photos when I finish that one) and I do holiday caramels every year (I hand wrapped over a thousand of them last weekend). My friends call them "Karlmels" (my name is Karl) and every year I try to come up with some new flavors. This year the two new flavors were peppermint and bacon. Both are a hit.
I'm just glad we extend this contest through next month also. I'll be sure to get an entry in this time.
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Wouild you be willing to share your Karlmel recipe in the Random Musings board? I would love to try to make Karlmels! :WEEEE:
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Playing around with some graveyard point and green adventurine, the plume agate didn't have much color so I decided to do a doublet. I am doing this off my iPhone so I may have to do several posts.
The slabs before glueing
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Glued and ready to cut
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Finished cab.
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Great cab and show how Jhon!
Hey where you been, no spheres etc!???
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Way to start off the contest! That's a beauty. :headbang:
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Here we go! Crazy Lace that was in the rock collection I received with a rock saw purchase. It's been in a box in my garage for about two years. Polished both sides, can't decide which I like better!
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This contest is out of control. LOL Jhon has plenty of spheres, besides he can make his own!!!!
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Looks like you will
Have to roll the prize over to the next contest. What happen to everyone? No one cutting stones?
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Seems like everyone is in hibernation, do most my cutting in the winter when I can't go hounding. I thought a sphere to winner would spark more entry's. Still 21 days in the month!!!
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WOW, what gorgeous and generous prize. Thank you so much.
Have been (am still) busy restoring an old stone-cabin up on our house-mountain, so did not really take the time to do anything close to a cab these past few months. Still working on some Fire Agate, that might come close to be accepted as a cab. Lets see if I can finish one of them in time to play along. For me, participation has always been for fun, so in the unlikely event of a lead on the board by the end of voting, any and all prizes on offer should go either to the next piece in line, or on to the next contest.
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Is it too late to participate? If not, I have this.
This was a commission to carve this opal leaving as much opal as possible. It's a Lightning Ridge opal, I believe, and it weighed an ounce to begin with. It had several micro-cracks, and I had to stop carving with power and switch over to hand carving to keep them from propagating. It was polished the hard way; by hand.
This is without a doubt the most valuable piece of rough I've ever carved. I had to say "I am a competent carver" over and over again before I dared to touch it, and after a day I finally got brave enough to start. It had the one large crack that the design had to be adapted to fit, and things kept going south on different parts of it. I kinda wished I'd been braver and gone for more depth but in light of all the little cracks that got uncovered I thought that prudence was the better part of valor.
Debbie K
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Holy crap, Debbie, that is beautiful! You did an outstanding job getting the fire to pop on the finished piece. What was the weight of the finished piece? :Worthy:
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Wow, outstanding piece. Love the colour-play in it.
Polishing all those lines without loosing texture is no little feat.
Excellent entry.
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WOW! What a beautiful piece, things are heating up in the cab contest.
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Yea how do you top that :WHOAR:
I have been working on my pic taking and I still need a lot of work. OK pic does not show the resizing/croping. I need to work on that. I am in and will take more pic of the process
Bless
Shawn
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Yep, competing with Debbie's opal is going to be tough! It's truly an outstanding piece. I've been working on an entry and to stay within the time limits of the competition I'm posting it anyhow. It's a chunk of rutilated quartz that was a challenge to finish fairly clean due to lots of pits and a few pesky fractures. The final result weighs a bit over 48 ct. and measures approx. 38 x 25 x 8.5 mm. Here it is from rough to finish:
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Ooooh, another of my favorites! With both of these entries, my lowly cab will blah. But in the spirit of competition and giving folks a few cabs to choose from, mine will be entered as soon as I finish the back. With football coming on soon, that might not be until tomorrow! :LOLOL:
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Robin,
The rough opal weighed about one ounce. I'm not sure what it weighed afterwards because epoxy was applied to the back after the first photo, not by me. I figure I reduced the size of the opal by about 1/10; it was so big to begin with that it probably still weighed over 110 carats afterwards. I should have weighed it with the backing before I started so I could have known how much I removed, but I forgot.
I think the point of the contest isn't about the beauty of the stone to begin with, but what we all do with what we have. It's hard to compete with gorgeous material, but I think this contest is about more than that. If it were, it would be about who had the most money to buy the best material.
This isn't one of my best carvings, because I turned coward, but I wanted to see more participation in the competition. It lacks the definition that I would have liked to gotten, most of the carving and all of the polishing was done by hand.
Love the rutilated quartz; it's one of my favorites, too. It's tricky to work with too, so many pits and cracks in so much of the material that it's hard to get a piece that looks really good like this one does.
Let's see more entries!
Debbie K
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I was just wondering about the weight because I always cry inside when I'm grinding away carat weight with opal. Then I suck it up and cut the best stone out of rough that I can. Sometimes you have to cut a lot off of a stone to make it the best stone. The rough you carved was beautiful to start, but cutting something of that quality when it's not your own can make your stomach do flip-flops. :toothy12:
My cab will be up tomorrow. It turned out nice, so I'm all in! :icon_sunny:
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Gorgeous finish on that piece Shawn. What material are we looking at?
Rutilated quartz is always nice to look at. Nice layout, and hence beautiful use of material.
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Here's my entry -- Dead Camel jasper cab. It came out of a very small slabbette, so I cut an elongated oval that fit the slab. First picture is the slabbette and the rest of the polished cab. Please excuse my very crummy picture-taking ability.
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Hi All
Asianfire a thumbs up on the polish from you means a lot to me.
This comes from an old chunk that I got from my mentor about 35 years ago and this is from the first slab that I finally cut. The cab was cut from the right. the rest of the slab is going into a box for the winner of my auction. This is a stone tht every time I look at it I get lost. One of these days I will learn to take better pic.
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Hey All
I have to add this. I try to cut calibrated cabs and some think we dont have an "eye" for me it is just another challenge. This ended up as 29.44 x22.26 close but I still need work on that.
I will work on my pic's and hope to some day take a pic of what I see.
Bless
Shawn
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Shawn:
If I ever got that close, I'd be over the moon. I always tell folks that I carve because I suck at doing cabochons, and it's the truth. No one can tell me I'm carving wrong, but they sure can tell me everything I'm doing wrong on my cabs.
Debbie K
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:LOLOL: :thumbsup: :toothy10: :angel9:
Exactly! :DRUNKS:
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Wow more and more really GREAT cabs !!!
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Hi All
Again thanks for the kind words. Carving who me no way. That is way more complicated than what I do. As a calibrated it gives me the size of what in the end.
As the lone cal guy here i think do u know a place where that is talked about? Like if I am really trying it usually not a problem to get in .1 mill is that good or bad
Bless
Shawn
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Shawn, I would think that's plenty close by anyone's standards! :icon_sunny:
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Hi All
As the lone cal guy here i think do u know a place where that is talked about? Like if I am really trying it usually not a problem to get in .1 mill is that good or bad
Bless
Shawn
I think it's extremely good. But if my experience is any guide -- and I've cut/set quite a few calibrated stones -- pre-made settings vary a lot in size. My default is to cut-to-fit when I need to replace a stone. Unless cutting to an exact size is a personal quest I don't think it has a lot of real world application. Most large-scale cutters I know deliver 0.5 to 1.0 mm. size variation in parcels, which seems to be acceptable in the industry.
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Wow, great entrys, will be hard to decide a winner, my entry is Australian imperial rhodonite from my region, very rare rhodonite this grade.
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Hi All
Gemfeller Thanks and I agree that "calibrated" cabs that for mass produced settings are cut at least .25 mm below calibration standards for perfect calibration. Yes at times i strive to see just how i can do. How do I compare my skills in this to another against the standard of a perfect cut calibration.
Yea I am :WHOAR:
Hey auscarver
My oldest girl saw your heart and now wants me to make one. Very nice. Awsome material I want some.
Beautiful
Bless
Shawn
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Wow, nice! I wonder what shipping is to Australia?
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ok, im in.
Slaughter Mountain arizona fire agate.
Carved this from a preform i sliced from a larger rock a year ago.
I didnt even think there would be a speck of fire, just wanted to make a simple cabochon on my wheels. but i hit it with my Fordome last weekend.
I love the purple and greens, I wanted the original host rock/matrix, the white milky agate and opal to all flow together, i think i succeeded in my attempt, with a gift of Lillies in the valley (the colorful fire)
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Hmmm now my shipping costs might have gotten smaller. Nice!
On a side note I'm headed to Phoenix Sunday to play golf and watch golf, but mostly play golf. I get back on the 7th, if the voting closes before then will the winner pm me their shipping address.
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Hmmm now my shipping costs might have gotten smaller. Nice!
On a side note I'm headed to Phoenix Sunday to play golf and watch golf, but mostly play golf. I get back on the 7th, if the voting closes before then will the winner pm me their shipping address.
you're just going to go drink ice cold beer on a golf course from your golf bag/beer cooler. no fibbing......
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am i cheating using a stone with teal, green, gold, red, brown and purple fire colors in it?
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Wow, nice additions all round.
Now I really need to get a good pic of my intended entry..........!
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Wow, we're getting some great participation and stones this time! I want to see more!
Debbie K
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No worries about timing. Entries have to be by the end of the day on the 31st. I'll put the voting up on 2/1 and voting is open for 2 weeks. :occasion14:
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O my goodness the competing just keeps ramping up!!!
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I've been away and just came back to see all these incredible entries. Debbie, that has got to be the best piece of opal I have ever seen. How did you get the colors to show up when you took the picture? What a spectacular, beautiful piece of carving. I am turning green with envy.
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The first muted picture was with filtered light. The second was taken with direct light from an incandescent table lamp. I think it is a pretty amazing opal, too. It started out being about 1.5" x 1.5", and I was able to retain almost the same dimensions. Most of the weight loss was from the grinding off of the really high parts; carving was kept to a minimum. Believe it or not, I came up with 15 designs, and this was one of the 3 that keep almost all of the stone.
Michael, you're the opal expert, what would an opal that large and with that much fire fetch? All I know was that the thing terrified me to carve, I think I'll stick to the quartzes for a while and recover my nerve.
Debbie K
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Heres my last minute entry before I bug out for a couple weeks. Some kind of purple and orange stone. moderate hardness. This was a test to see how it cabbed as my main entry was going to be a cool fossil, but the phone came brought out too many flaws I couldnt see with the naked eye.
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OK, I said I would get one into this contest and this weekend was my last good chance to get one together. So here is my entry.
Green moss agate.
This was the first slab to drop off this stone (after the end cut). A piece broke off of one side of the slab and it had some interesting waterline agate and fortification with a small druzy pocket. I decided that this broken piece made a perfect preform...no trim saw required.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v521/ToTheSummit/The%20Rocks%20Album/2017/Moss%20Agate/mossslab_zpsfbm32drv.jpg) (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/ToTheSummit/media/The%20Rocks%20Album/2017/Moss%20Agate/mossslab_zpsfbm32drv.jpg.html)
I let the natural shape of the piece dictate to me how it would end up. This is the final cab.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v521/ToTheSummit/The%20Rocks%20Album/2017/Moss%20Agate/moss1_zpsurfikc0k.jpg) (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/ToTheSummit/media/The%20Rocks%20Album/2017/Moss%20Agate/moss1_zpsurfikc0k.jpg.html)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v521/ToTheSummit/The%20Rocks%20Album/2017/Moss%20Agate/moss2_zpsqbqsrygv.jpg) (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/ToTheSummit/media/The%20Rocks%20Album/2017/Moss%20Agate/moss2_zpsqbqsrygv.jpg.html)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v521/ToTheSummit/The%20Rocks%20Album/2017/Moss%20Agate/moss3_zpsg6w5glo8.jpg) (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/ToTheSummit/media/The%20Rocks%20Album/2017/Moss%20Agate/moss3_zpsg6w5glo8.jpg.html)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v521/ToTheSummit/The%20Rocks%20Album/2017/Moss%20Agate/moss4_zpsymrsocmj.jpg) (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/ToTheSummit/media/The%20Rocks%20Album/2017/Moss%20Agate/moss4_zpsymrsocmj.jpg.html)
I also polished the back. The waterline shows nicely there.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v521/ToTheSummit/The%20Rocks%20Album/2017/Moss%20Agate/mossback_zpsv51orkgd.jpg) (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/ToTheSummit/media/The%20Rocks%20Album/2017/Moss%20Agate/mossback_zpsv51orkgd.jpg.html)
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This was a gnarly end cut of a green moss agate. I noticed a red bird shaped spot in the green moss that reminded me of the cardinals when they migrate through Maine and land on the tree branches in my yard, so I cut it to represent that. The moss branches lend the illusion of depth.
I am not a copycat! I only noticed that the most recent entry was of a (lovely) green moss agate after I had finished polishing mine. However, they are different enough that I felt it was OK to post it anyway. Sorry for the picture size problems. I don't understand what happened to my picture file sizes and have tried adjusting so they would post.
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that is a beautiful moss! :Worthy:
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Not what I wanted to post, but no sun for nearly 6 days, so no chance of better pictures.
Still wanna be here together with all those fabolous creations.
My entry is a Mexican Fire Agate. For the purpose here, I will show only one side, but its double-sided, hence there is non-fire chalcedony at one end as that ties in with the design in the back.
Here is the rough
(http://i1200.photobucket.com/albums/bb340/kainzerkurt/ppIMG_20161022_191804_zpsoovrkwyn.jpg) (http://s1200.photobucket.com/user/kainzerkurt/media/ppIMG_20161022_191804_zpsoovrkwyn.jpg.html)
And two slightly different angles as captured last week
(http://i1200.photobucket.com/albums/bb340/kainzerkurt/ppUntitled%20-%202_zpskzizyil0.jpg) (http://s1200.photobucket.com/user/kainzerkurt/media/ppUntitled%20-%202_zpskzizyil0.jpg.html)
(http://i1200.photobucket.com/albums/bb340/kainzerkurt/ppUntitled%20-%203_zpszijzgmy1.jpg) (http://s1200.photobucket.com/user/kainzerkurt/media/ppUntitled%20-%203_zpszijzgmy1.jpg.html)
Thanks for looking, Kurt