Hi, been well over a decade since I have done anything on msg boards, but here I am.
My wife and I are 20+ years rock hound enthusiasts and nearly three years ago we decided to jump to lapidary. While this new hobby is technically in the realm of exclusively being a hobby. She has a I guess you can say a hobby business. She makes and sells a variety of hobby things at Chicken swaps locally. One subset is tumbling rocks which surprisingly generates steady sales. To be honest, neither of us believe that we will be the next Jared, Rio Grand, or Fire Mountain Beads. We simply love doing it for sheer creativity of it.
We started with by purchasing a vintage Highland Park E10 which I cleaned an fully restored.
With that this is what we have pieced together in the past three years.
Highland Park E10 - 60, 220 grit with 8" saw.
Loretone Rotary Tumbler 33B - it is tumbling as I am typing this in our guest bathroom.
Rio Grand Kiln Table top - We plan to use this to fuse glass, another hobby we did WAY back when.
A suite of Gem Making Equipment. One of which is a reason why I joined this board.
RayTec Saw 6"
Graves Mark I Gem Faceting Machine
Diamond Pacific Genie 80, 220 grit galaxy wheels and nothing else- this one is the most fascinating, pardon the pun, equipment we purchased. This has a great backstory backstory as well as a current story. This equipment is as about as vintage as you can get.
Finally
Fantom Slab Saw 14" - Vintage for sure. Great condition with a scalloped ring gear, and while I was restoring this I supposedly lost the split nut. I am in talks with Cigar Box Rocks of which they have a ring gear but need to fabricate the split nut.
So, my cabbing adventures are finding rocks from all over the place. Where I live there is an abundance of quartz on our property that was brought in as fill. Where I work, they have a handful of concrete ramps that the aggregate is full of Citrine Quartz. Over the years forklifts have passed over these ramps and slabs the wheels have kicked out aggregate rubbish full of citrines.
My wife and I both have been picking these up and I have been cutting them down, clumsily dopping them and using them on the HP and the Genie.
Behind the local urban, rural pick up rock hounding we probably of a storage room full of gem quality stones. We both have decided it is best to work with junky rock to build up the skill.
At some point pictures are forth coming.
