Rocking it!

For a change of pace, I signed up for a cabochon workshop at the nearby Lapidary Club.  

It meets in the basement of a county nature center, 

sharing space with freezers full of snake food (rats and mice!)

The teachers were enthusiastic and welcoming, so our group of four students dove right in, choosing a promising-looking slab to transform into a smooth pillow of rock.  

Three steps:  Grind, Sand, and Polish.

The room was lined with various fierce looking equipment:  saws and grinders.  

The first step we rough trimmed the slab to the approximate shape.

Next, using a coarse grinder, we chewed away those angular edges to round out the stone.

For the next steps, its not a good idea to hold the stone with your fingers (ouch!), 

so a "dap stick" is attached with some special kind of wax.

You mark a "girdle" to show where the straight sides that fit into a setting stops 

and the curve of the dome should begin.

The expert advice from the teachers was sometimes contradictory!  

I guess everyone has their own way of doing things...

You smooth the dome through several different grinders of successively finer and finer grit.

I was pretty chuffed at how nice mine was coming along!  I pictured a craggy mountain range with northern lights in the night sky.

The final step was a diamond polish at 50,000 grit--whoa!

I can join the Lapidary Club if I want for a modest annual fee, and make many more of these.  Do I really need a new hobby???