Cabochon Machine How-to

My favorite part of making jewellery is the lapidary work.
Cutting, shaping and polishing semi-precious stones.

Quartz, Rhodonnite, Dolomite, Feldspar , Tigers Eye, Moon Stone, Jade, Garnet.
I love my stones, rocks and crystals & I love the I have a chance to work with them so up close and personal.

Here are all of the steps needed to make a basic Cabochon stone just in case your curious about lapidary Art.




Step 1. Pick Your Rock Slab.

 Blue Moon Stone

Step 2. Choose Your Frame.

Various new & Antique cabochon frames.

Step 3. Size & Mark The Stone.

Finding and  the appropriate size and tracing the outline with an aluminium pencil on both sides.

Blue Moon Stone with Cabochon outline.

Step 4. Table saw.

Home made table saw used to cut stones.

Cutting the stone into a smaller, more manageable size to work with.

The Last cut for the second stone.

 Step 5. Cabochon Machine.Filing Down.

The Cabochon machine.

Using A Cab machine to file down the side of the stone to the shape traced onto the stone.

Step 6. Wax & Stamp.

Melting wax(like the type used to seal envlopes) .

Lightly heating up the stone and stamping the stone to a wooden dowel.

Step 7. Cabochon machine. Final shaping, creating the dome, buffing and polishing.

This Machine has 6 blade as well as a polisher.
Time must be spent on each blade and polisher in order to get the desired effect and glossy finish.

Step 8. Removing the left over wax.

Heating the stone and removing the wax.

Step 9. Placing the stone into its frame

Blue Moonstone and Cameo.
It's for a wedding.
Vale & hair clip will be added later.

There you go, step 1-9.

Here are some other examples of what can be done with the cabochon machine.

Lava Glass.

Rhodonite.

Selinite Wand.

Tigers Eye.

Tigers eye and iron ore.
Antique western bow-tie.