Lapidary Workshop Rebuilt

Lapidary Workshop Rebuilt

We have been talking for quite while now about rebuilding our Lapidary workshop in order to make it more efficient and get it all into one area so we finally did it over the last bank holiday weekend, it took about 2 days to complete.

The other reason for doing this was that we wanted to have the workshop enclosed so that the warmth from the wood burner won’t be lost and we will then be able to work out there during the winter as well.

All of the worktops are made from 12mm marine ply which have had numerous coats of clear varnish applied.

So here are a few pictures of were we live!

The rock drill area:

We use a fordom SR series felxi shaft set up which serves our needs admirably, our drill bit are triple ripple bits for the smaller holes and then we use diamond coated bits to open the holes up to about 2.5mm which is fine for threading leather thong through.

The rock tumbler area:

Our tumbling equipment is made by Evans and Beech in the UK, the larger ones are the Evans CR2 tumbler machines and all of the barrels ae now rubber, made by Evans, it’s great now we have switched to rubber barrels and got rid of the plastic barrels, we can now hear ourselves think!

Busy Rock Tumblers:

Here are both of the tumblers in action

The cabochon machine and polishing area:

This is our homemade cabochon machine and polisher, the polisher shares the saw.grinder motor, we just swap the drive belts, works just fine. We use cerium oxide polish on a felt pad and it works fine almost all our rocks.

The rock saw area:

This is the rock saw and grinder combo machine, built way back when by PMR, it was bought second hand from Ebay about 2 years ago and has served us well, it has an 8″ saw blade and a lthal 8″ silcon carbide wheel which really eat finger ends if you are not careful!

Enjoy

Dave