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[seejey]

I like to say "Hello from old continent." I came from Slovakia, little country in Central Europe. So I am here with my first quick post.
I tried to "develop" process of stabilizing chlor-opal. It is a green variety of common opal from Slovak lokality "Mochovce". We have here more than one lokality for this green variety of common opal. Rought chlor-opal are mainly unusable, because of cracks and different hardness and different state of inclusions. Also rought chlor-opal are in different state of opalisation. So I played with resin stabilization in vacuum.


Chips of chlor-opal immersed in mixture of crystal resin with acetone in vaccum food box.


Cutted "mini-slab" from stabilized chlor-opal.




Finished quick cutted cabochon. Testing compactness of stone durring cutting and ability to take polish.

Sorry for my English.

[Itsandbits]

Welcome from BC Canada; your post is very clear  That looks like a nice colour of green to work with, how well did the resin soak into the stone? What method are you using to create a vacumn?

[seejey]

Thank for your kindly welcome words. I think that that resin soak very well. Better than I expected. For vacuum I used food vacuum box. Manual, totally uncontrolled vacuum ;)
I have still few stabilized pieces in drying process. Each was different mixture of every elements involved in process, so I can determine, which is better. I the future I will build "real" vacuum chamber, for bigger inner space and total control of the pressure (vacuum).

[Itsandbits]

I don't know how your vacumn process works but as long as it does that's good. I've tried mixing acetone with the thicker resins to make them cure slower as well as thinning the resin  so the stone will get permeated well too. I use a hand held pump brake fluid draining tool to create the vacumn; 25" so it is strong but recently scavenged the vacumn pump off a diesel engine to use for this; it shoule be much faster.
What other rocks have you got to work with over there?

[seejey]

I don't know how your vacumn process works but as long as it does that's good.

My process works very similar. With hand vacuum pump ;) But it looks like toy, because my vacuum set is used for storing fresh food in refrigerator and home marinating meat ;)

I've tried mixing acetone with the thicker resins to make them cure slower as well as thinning the resin  so the stone will get permeated well too.

I tryed it too. But stones are still in drying process.

What other rocks have you got to work with over there?

Mainly opals from my visits of our Slovak opal localities.

[Itsandbits]

when you resin treat the stones, heating them with a light bulb will speed the chemical process that cures the resin. I use an old coffee can tipped over them with vent holes so the acetone fumes don't build up and explode. I've seen lots of nice agates and jasper from that part of the world; keep an eye open for them and have fun

[ToTheSummit]

Welcome to the forums.  Don't worry, your English is fine, and certainly better than my Slovak! LOL

That is a beautiful stone.  Looks like your stabilization worked well.  Looking forward to seeing more of your local stones.

[seejey]

I like to share with you our lokal stones which I or my brother will cut into cabochons. Primary it will be opals.

About hour before I finished impregnating of another opals in resin. I want to take  shot of bubbles leaking out of stones immersed in resin and by mistake I recorded short video.

https://plus.google.com/102793488377983815111/posts/Z872GBX8qhW

[seejey]

Next batch was removed from coctail

[palmwood13]

Nice job and and a great way to stabilize stones. I will try this on some Spencer opal. Thanks for sharing.