Lapidary
General discussion of our day to day lapidary activities
Stamford Lapidary
After quite a few years of being involved in the UK lapidary scene, I have decided to retire. What does this mean for Stamford Lapidary? Stamford lapidary is closed now. Well, I won’t be active in the field any more, I haven’t been for a while though! The workshop will be cleaned out and my […]
Rock Tumbler Spares
This range of Rock Tumbler Spares offers a broad coverage of the spares for the main UK rock tumbler manufacturers. This page is organised by general or generic spares first, for example: those that will fit on more than one manufacturers machines. Then it become more manufacturer specific, we cover Beach, Evans and Rotabarrel machine […]
Rock Tumblers for Polishing Stones
Rock Tumblers have been used for many years to make smooth, shiny polished stones from rough rocks. People tumble pebbles they find on the beach or bits of other rocks they find when out and about. Then there are those that only tumble semi precious rough rocks like Amethyst and Carnelian to name a few. […]
Dop Stick – How To Set One Up With A Stone
The dop stick is a very important aid to the Lapidary Artist, allowing for a method to securely hold a stone whilst it being worked. While at the same time keeping fingers away from the highly abrasive and fast rotating grinding wheels. Ask anyone who has used a Lapidary grinding machine without a dop stick […]
Silicon Carbide Grits and Polishes
Without silicon carbide grits it would be very difficult to run a rock tumbler. The various grits, for example: 20, 60, 80, 220 and 400, 600 and 1200 are used to progressively grind out the imperfections on your rocks, with the 20 grit being the most aggressive. Another important material for the tumble process is […]
Slicing Up the Zebra Stone and Printstone Rough
Muddy Sunday – Slicing the Zebra Stone and Printstone Just over a year ago we were asked by a client if we could work some Zebra Stone for her and create some pendants which we did, and ever since we have been looking for some Zebra Stone of our own to work with. Not so […]
Bespoke Lapidary Projects
From a practicing Lapidaries point of view these stones are a challenge, the challenge being “what would this look like once it cut and polished”. This is exactly what we do here at Stamford lapidary.
Zebra Stone – How I worked it
So the first step was to take a slab of the piece the client had sent us, I did this with a normal hacksaw, no water and just took my time and I was surprised at how easily it cut through it, didn’t take long at all. I also used the hacksaw to cut out the basic shapes of the pendants.
Is Self Employment a hobby or a job
Have you ever been at a craft fair and have peoplestop at your stall and admire your work and make a comment like “nice hobby” or how long did that take to make and when you tell them they say “you obviously have a lot of spare time”