Sticks In Stones Lapidary is a full service rock shop specializing in petrified wood and agates. We feature world class specimens, bookends, spheres, jaspers, geodes, thundereggs, cabochons, gems, minerals and fossils, rough rock, diamond saw rock cutting services and custom rock polishing services.
This is a "rough" Friend's Ranch thunderegg. At this point - what you have inside could be glorious, or it could be junk. The only way to find out is to cut it!
We're in luck! It's a gorgeous thunderegg with a beautiful, richly colored agate lens. The way the stone looks bathed in cutting oil is a close approximation of how it will look when polished. The saw shown here is a self feeding, oil lubricated diamond 24" diameter blade saw. It took about 1/2 an hour to make the cut shown. We'll get the oil cleaned up so we can inspect the stone for fractures and seal any that might chip out during lapping.
One of the things that sets our work apart from that of other lapidaries is the quality of our finesh. These big laps are part of the secret. You can't get a perfect polish on an imperfectly prepared surface. These laps insure we get a mirror flat face ready for final sanding and polishing.
We built these monster sized flat laps to provide collector grade, mirror flat finishes at affordable prices.
After cutting, the rocks are ground flat on a specially built lap that produces a perfectly flat surface.
We spent most of the winter of 98 building these laps. The design is a combination of several noted Northwest lapidaries, including our own special modifications, that allow us to achieve results rarely seen in the consumer market! The color scheme was inspired by baby Jake. Everything else in the house is primary colors, why not the rockshop too?!!
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A Full Service Lapidary
Sticks In Stones Lapidary 8918 SW Grabhorn Rd., Aloha, OR 97007
USA
Once flat, they are sanded smooth as glass on another lap built just for this purpose. This combination of laps produces an optically flat surface that isn't distorted or wavey when polished.
Finally, the stones are polished on yet another lap to bring out a mirror perfect, liquid shine - the Sticks-in-Stones trademark polish is complete! Jake is busy performing a Q/A check prior to allowing any of the carefully sanded stones onto this last stage of the polishing process. The rocks don't go on until he says they're ready!