What was the first water solution you placed the rocks in ? The next step did you add or takeaway pressure? I truely love your work . Iam very impressed on how you work . Beautiful piece you made.
@charleneinman3625 The stone is a low quality piece of Birdseye Marble, which is fossilized algae, some pieces are stronger than others. I intended to cab a section across the stripe revealed by the cut, but the stone was too weak and fell apart. The first step which I didn't record is I dried the stone under medium heat for several hours to get as much water out as I could. Second step which is about 29 seconds in is I put the dried stones in a bath of Cactus Juice (heat activated resin) then pulled a vacuum on the chamber, this helps remove any additional moisture from the stone, and pulls out air allowing the cactus juice to get into the smaller, deeper cracks when the air is let back in, then it's placed back in an oven to cure the resin. This made the stone strong enough to hold up to a cab cut, search for "stabilizing rocks" there are multiple methods. For a very weak and porous rock like this, I chose to use cactus juice and vacuum. When the weather turns hopefully I can get some more video's up, and possibly some "how to" videos.
I tried to cab around that section and it broke on me :-( I put the rest in cactus juice so it should hold up better if I find another column in one of the other stones.
I think it's just low quality birds eye marble. We were finding chunks of fossilized algae clusters, so I figured let me give it a shot and see how it turns out, I was surprised it took such a descent polish!
Pretty sure it's low quality birds eye marble we found while hiking and looking for fossils. Found lots of clusters of algae fossils, I could tell the stone wasn't great quality and was afraid it was too brittle. What I didn't show in the video is several of the slab cubs broke apart so I wasn't able to cab the section I wanted to, so I ran the surviving cuts through a stabilization (vacuum and oven with cactus juice) which worked well enough to get a cab. I sure wish it was opal though!
@rhyoliterick yeah I figured out it wasn't opal... it's just that I could well have imagined a vacuum treatment would push sugar solution all through the material within an hour as opposed to soaking it for days as i do. Cooking it was too harden it then. Sugar does harden matrix but it's just as likely to bust it apart! Treating opal is a bit of a lottery to say the least... the main purpose however, is to put black material in to increase the contrast of the colours. If it were me, I'd accept a smaller stone and cut down to the shiny bit in the middle. I also fully understand why you didn't, nature isn't necessarily our aesthetic!
I have some more soaking now, I'm going to try to stabilize the entire stone whole before making any slabs so I can be more picky about what sections to cut for a cab. I've cut and polished some high quality birds eye before and it turns out real nice, but I don't think I'm going to get good quality out of this stuff. But, it only cost me half a tank of gas and some walking around :-)
@rhyoliterick a man after my own heart. I've just baked some coober pedy opal to see if the matrix has colour in it. Being Australian, I can buy opal by the kilo (1 kilo is about 2 pounds). I can then sift through it and pick out the gems the opal cutters missed or didn'tthink worth their time. I don't think it's economical to do this in the states, freight would be prohibitively expensive.
Gorgeous! Never would have thought it was beautiful inside.
Beautiful work.
Great video!
Just Hiding! Beautiful
Looks good!
Awesome! 👍
Nice!
What was the first water solution you placed the rocks in ? The next step did you add or takeaway pressure? I truely love your work . Iam very impressed on how you work . Beautiful piece you made.
@charleneinman3625 The stone is a low quality piece of Birdseye Marble, which is fossilized algae, some pieces are stronger than others. I intended to cab a section across the stripe revealed by the cut, but the stone was too weak and fell apart. The first step which I didn't record is I dried the stone under medium heat for several hours to get as much water out as I could. Second step which is about 29 seconds in is I put the dried stones in a bath of Cactus Juice (heat activated resin) then pulled a vacuum on the chamber, this helps remove any additional moisture from the stone, and pulls out air allowing the cactus juice to get into the smaller, deeper cracks when the air is let back in, then it's placed back in an oven to cure the resin. This made the stone strong enough to hold up to a cab cut, search for "stabilizing rocks" there are multiple methods. For a very weak and porous rock like this, I chose to use cactus juice and vacuum. When the weather turns hopefully I can get some more video's up, and possibly some "how to" videos.
It looks like there was a column in the stone when you sliced it.I'll bet that is cool,too!
I tried to cab around that section and it broke on me :-( I put the rest in cactus juice so it should hold up better if I find another column in one of the other stones.
Kind of a meh rock, love the little eyeball though. Great polish!
I think it's just low quality birds eye marble. We were finding chunks of fossilized algae clusters, so I figured let me give it a shot and see how it turns out, I was surprised it took such a descent polish!
Thought it was matrix opal.... the treatment didn't work as planned?
Pretty sure it's low quality birds eye marble we found while hiking and looking for fossils. Found lots of clusters of algae fossils, I could tell the stone wasn't great quality and was afraid it was too brittle. What I didn't show in the video is several of the slab cubs broke apart so I wasn't able to cab the section I wanted to, so I ran the surviving cuts through a stabilization (vacuum and oven with cactus juice) which worked well enough to get a cab. I sure wish it was opal though!
@rhyoliterick yeah I figured out it wasn't opal... it's just that I could well have imagined a vacuum treatment would push sugar solution all through the material within an hour as opposed to soaking it for days as i do. Cooking it was too harden it then. Sugar does harden matrix but it's just as likely to bust it apart! Treating opal is a bit of a lottery to say the least... the main purpose however, is to put black material in to increase the contrast of the colours.
If it were me, I'd accept a smaller stone and cut down to the shiny bit in the middle. I also fully understand why you didn't, nature isn't necessarily our aesthetic!
I have some more soaking now, I'm going to try to stabilize the entire stone whole before making any slabs so I can be more picky about what sections to cut for a cab. I've cut and polished some high quality birds eye before and it turns out real nice, but I don't think I'm going to get good quality out of this stuff. But, it only cost me half a tank of gas and some walking around :-)
@rhyoliterick a man after my own heart. I've just baked some coober pedy opal to see if the matrix has colour in it. Being Australian, I can buy opal by the kilo (1 kilo is about 2 pounds). I can then sift through it and pick out the gems the opal cutters missed or didn'tthink worth their time. I don't think it's economical to do this in the states, freight would be prohibitively expensive.
Good job! you can polush a turd then!