Lapidaryforum.net
Rock Art => Carvings and Sculptures => Topic started by: auscarver on July 04, 2026, 04:34:50 AM
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This is the Coober Pedy potch fish I posted previously. Added heaps more to the design.
I carved a base from a piece of painted lady opal from Andamooka in South Australia. This was going to be my entry in Australian opal awards in lighting Ridge but they cancelled the competition. Not sure why.
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Beautiful. I am particularly impressed by how groups of ridges/channels meet at different angles - the ends are very smooth and it all fits together comfortably.
How many different shapes of carving bits do you use for a piece like this? Do you stick with only a few (ball, cylinder with rounded top), or is there a bigger variety of shapes and sizes?
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Thanks. I used sharp bullet points to rough carve the channels than small disk points to make the lines cleaner. The ones under the cross over were very challenging. Used little ball points for that. I first smooth these with carbide sticks I cut myself from old silicon carbide cabbing wheels. Like small files. Go to 1200 with these then switch to diamond and final polished on cerium. It was slightly better than 100 K diamond. Very challenging getting into all those cuts ridges.
A picture before I started the finer carving showing the points - burs.