Homemade sodium silicate (water glass)

Your Guerilla Gem Shop

Gemstones have always been a viable currency. A million dollars in gold weighs quite a lot, it is cumbersome to carry....the right gemstones can be worth a million dollars and easily fit into a pocket.


Here are some things I have learned about working gemstones that will help anyone who likes to work with stone or is thinking about working with stone. You can get a lot more information from my book HOW TO BUILD BETTER LAPIDARY EQUIPMENT, but this is actually what I have evolved to on my bench, to do the lions share of my work, having gone through the entire smorgasbord of manufactured equipment and home made equipment, several times.

My specialty tumblers and grinders and saws, in HOW TO BUILD BETTER LAPIDARY EQUIPMENT are very viable machinery: they will be even more viable and useful, I am sure, as more people become aware and are educated in how to change stones into money.

Rule #1

I have found that most gem operations can be done on miniaturized equipment with diamond grinding burrs of various sorts, and small diamond blades.

To see the type of tooling I am speaking of, visit:


http://www.lopacki.com

I have gone from massive bench top machines to small motors on movable wood bases which are supremely flexible in their uses and attributes. You get much better at finish and creative work very quickly, employing the smaller bench lathe type machines detailed below, which can easily be built for 20$ or less.


Rule #2

Durability. Build your equipment to last. This is not hard to do at all. Pretty is not important. In fact, you may come to redefine pretty, as you gain respect and even awe through witnessing long term and flawless mechanical operation. Teslas motors still run as they always have, and they are a marvel for you to ponder as you use them.



Rule #3

Safety.  A lot of safety is working wet and working outdoors. Your guerrilla shop will make it easy for you to be safe. By being mobile, you can employ the outdoors to your needs. Dust masks are good, but working wet is best, so that no powders ever become airborn. Rinse the work area regularly and well, so powders do not build up.


Your best water source for grinding operations up close is a simple spray bottle used by barbers and gardeners, housewives and window cleaners. Spray the wheels to keep them wet, refill the bottles when necessary. You can make shields for all your grinding operations from plastic milk jug or 2 liter bottoms, as explained below. They are a good idea in some situations.


Try to never work metal chain, wire, or rod on high speed or powerful motors.  Thats how fingers and eyes are lost.


There are attachments that can be bought for most motor shafts, which convert a motor into a useful bench machine, like a grinder, or polishing unit, or what have you, with the turn of a couple of allen screws.


The attachment I speak of actually fits over the motors shaft, and is available from 1/4" to 3/4" sizes, to fit those size shafts, and even larger.  Harbor Freight sometimes has these, or shop the Foredom company for a more high quality product. Once fastened to the motor shaft this attachment provides a threaded shaft for mounting a grinding wheel, or sanding drum, or flat lap disc.


There are some motor shaft attachments which are pointed and threaded to receive muslin wheels or other cloth polishing wheels.


Places like harbor freight call these motor shaft attachments: arbors. Other search terms: mandrels, chucks. I recommend Foredom motor shaft attachments whenever possible.


Be aware of right and left handed issues with these motor shaft attachments; will the shaft be facing right or left when mounted? The threading on the shaft will be different for different applications. They are sometimes labeled RH or LH.  You want the wheel turning toward you, not away from you, for several reasons, the most important being safety, but also because if it rotates away from you, versus toward you, it will most likely loosen itself through use and be a real pain. If you keep your motors nice and portable you can always just turn it around on the bench top if it is turning the wrong way.  Also, sometimes you can change the wiring at the motor and get a reverse spin to what you have, check the diagram on the motor if it has one.


The larger motors, like washing machine and dryers motors (1725 rpm 1/3 or 1/2 HP), can be dangerous and are actually overkill in most lapidary situations.


The best motor set up I have is a 1/20th hp motor with a 1/4" shaft, out of an IBM selectric typewriter. Attached to its shaft is a 1/4" mandrell/chuck. Into this chuck I can insert hundreds of different types of grinding bits and wheels. I can even make my own attachments with leather wheels, or silicon carbide cloth, and small diameter nuts and bolts. On this set up I can easily take a stone from rough shape to polish.

 Stones can be rough shaped, prior to grinding, with diamond blades and larger grinders. They can also be flaked/knapped, and broken in other shearing ways, to good effect. Think tile snapping. Also nipping with pliers is effective to trim a rock without specialised equipment. Finally, shields for all wheels can be made from milk jug bottoms or 2-liter bottoms. Just cut the bottle as long as needed, then melt a hole in its bottom for the shaft of the motor to pass through before the wheel or whatver is attached to the motor shaft. Attach to bench or work table with a tack or small flat headed nail.

OK. Motors should always be considered portable. Once you have an attachment on the shaft of your portable motor, so that it can accept grinding and sanding wheels, or diamond grinding bits or whatever, then use quick clamps to fasten the motors where needed on the benches you use. Sometimes spacer wood will be necessary in this clamping operation, to get the wheel off the bench. You can mount motors to permanent spacers easily enough with hose clamps or other things, then just clamp the whole show to the bench. thats how I do it. 

If you wish to make a motor semi-permanent in its application, and there are no readily available mounting features on the thing, you can wedge it at the bottom on two opposing sides, and use metal strapping with drywall screws to fasten it in place on a board, and there are other strapping configurations that work well too. Some motors have mounting features, but are out of synch with our particular needs. This is where the ability to fasten a motor in place using readily available materials is a good advantage to have.

I have many motors mounted in esoteric ways, most have been surprising in their longevity. Don't be skeered. Finally -- Never forget to look at old floor scrubbers and other equipment for sale at most thrift stores and flea markets. Some old floor scrubbers make excellent flat laps when reconfigured, and there are many other things that lend parts to educated entrepeneurship.

An important thing to know about motors is this: fans always prolong the life of electrical motors, when situated to dissipate heat. That means you should have the fan blowing on the electric motor in order to cool it, and it will run better for lots longer. Computer fans, I think they are also called biscuit fans, work very well and can be easily wired and configured to turn on when the motor is turned on. Also: when motors get old and carry a good load, sometimes they need to be hand started after the power is turned on, by spinning the pulley by hand.  Don't get your fingers in the belt/pulley interface, you will be very sorry if you do.

If a motor hums but does not move, try hand starting, it usually works. Other motors require capacitors to get going, but sometimes they too can be hand started when their capacitors go kaput, and are bypassed.

Some trix at the guerrilla gem bench: Old abrasives can be reused for lesser but more refined operations. Collect the slurries and other detritus of abrasive actions, and retain. Can be sorted by washing, or dry sifting, too.

Glue stix are a true innovation. They can be used for many things, not least of which is easily dopping stones for working. This gives the operator something to hold onto. Melt the end of a stix with a lighter and apply to the bottom of stone, then after it cools, the glue stix itself can be used to hold the rock when grinding, which saves fingernails and skin.  Wood dop sticks with dop wax are best, and small pieces of bamboo branches seem ready made for that operation.

Some very interesting pedal power machines are manifesting around, and pedal power is good. It is not too hard to do.

Diamond blades are going toward the miniature as well, and some can be bought less than an inch across! Many of these cut just fine when sprayed with water, or are otherwise lubricated. Some people make tile saws work for preforming rocks, and thats a good idea I think. Once the stone is down to grinding size though, a small bench-lathe will do all the rest of the work, all in one place, with a minimum of hassle, angst, and expense. Is that not nice?

Drilling stones definitely requires specialised equipment, and the 2 things that need to be remembered when drilling stone with a diamond bit is that slower is generally better, and the item being drilled with a diamond burr should be submerged in water, so that the drilling itself is also submerged. Clear the drilled hole often as you do it, which means: the deeper the hole goes, the more you should pull the bit up, actually exiting the hole, so that mud from the operation does not overheat the bit and cause the diamond plating to separate from the bit. Some neo-experimenters use bow drills and even galvanized pipes to drill holes larger than normal, or out of the ordinary, and I think anything a person can do to accomplish what they are able to conceive is a good thing, and the way its supposed to be.  Keep an open open mind.

Large stone or glass drilling is done with an abrasive slurry that is steadily drip-fed to the point of contact between stone and a piece of heavier sized pipe. Very time consuming, but ways can be improvised to speed it up, if thought is given and time is taken. The native Americans had some novel drilling units, most notably a pump type drill that is easy to duplicate and is the most efficient non-electrical drill I have ever seen.

Hand Grinders should be employed whenever possible because they are good efficient tools for the stone sculptor. They are made from small motors modified by attaching a pistol grip, usually by means of a couple of hose clamps around the motor, and through a perforation on the pistol grip handle. Put a chuck on the motor shaft and you can easily utilize all the available diamond grinding bits and burrs to carve large sized sculptures. These also make good hand-sanding units. Cut discs of sandpaper 3-6" across and attach to a mandrel with a washer on either side of paper. This will flex if it has no backing to it, and thats fine because the flexing of the sandpaper disc will allow you better control at contours and in other hard to sand places.

About rocks. They must have good eye appeal, bright, colors, chatoyance, opalaescence, irridesence -- this is where pretty matters, pretty is all. It takes as long to make a strand of dull grey limestone beads as it does a strand of bright green serpentine beads. Always strive for bright colors, clear and clean material free of pits and undercutting, and the nicest polish you can get. If you have a stone people look at and go Wow, thats a good one.  Remember though that the dust from some stones is poisonous or hazardous, and with the softer materials it is definitely something to guard against.



Bill Gallagher

Light Happens.

How To Make Flap Wheel Sanding Discs For Bench Lathe

The best way to make flap wheels for the bench lathe: cut a circle out of sanding cloth, punch a hole in the middle, put it on a mandrel with two washers, either side, and then make four equal and equilateral cuts at four places on the outside of this disc. Cuts are at 12 oclock, 3, 6, 9 oclock, and come in only about 1/4 " or so. 

They deform spherically and uniform every time, make nice inexpensive and easily replacable sanding tools. I use 100, 220 grit belts mostly, I cut the worn ones up for this, or if I need real aggressive action I use new sanding cloth in those grits. 400 and 600 work too. 

 One must be forceful to get the propellor shape to manifest, and this should happen as the disc begins to wear some, so that you get max cutting power from the new cloth. Once the propellor shape happens you will get a true flap wheel effect and it will be harder to use the center of the disc. The tool will take a lot of hard wear before it wears out. It can be used inside hollows, and works well for that, just watch that metal from the tool does not hit the stone.

Increasing the number of cuts at the outside of the disc can create some interesting effects, and by making the cuts deeper at the edge of the disc you can actually get a flapwheel effect. Finally, if no cuts are made, the wheel wears and forms in certain predictable ways too, giving you a real nice spectrum of variability in your sanding work.

 

How To Build A Diamond Saw On The Fly

A picture essay of a saw I recently built to handle a 14" blade which I already owned.  The blade is the hard part of this project, the bigger they are the higher the cost, and I needed something to cut with fast.  I found the arbor somewhere, and it runs nice and true. This is my first real wood project, and Gunn Cues was right, vibration was nearly eliminated.  This thing cut like a hoggy dog.  I made the blade spacer/bushing  for the shaft from a slice of pvc pipe that was then cut and adjusted to make a perfectly round run on the saw.  That takes some practice but is critical and it can be done if the time is taken.

The Ad For My Book On Building Lapidary Equipment

Now with FREE SHIPPING WORLDWIDE !!! 

Save Big Dollars all the way around on this killer resource. $ 49.95 per book.

How To Build Diamond Trim Saws, Large Sized Diamond Drop Saws, Vibrating Tumblers, Giant Rock Saws For Cutting Decorative Tiles and Facings, Great Flat Laps, Bench Grinders, A Portable and Trouble Free water source for all Lapidary Operations, and much more.
This Self Published book is comprised of five plan sets which have consistently sold for 20 dollars each over the last three years or so, plus one plan set usually priced at 10 dollars, PLUS quite a few tricks and tips concerning other bench tools, methodology, and efficiency in the Lapidary Shop which have never been offered before.
These plan sets have been entirely redone with computer drawings and rewrites to the text which incorporate new information from R & D over the last 7 years. The book is over 45 pages of cut-and-dried and easy-to-understand How To Build Better Lapidary Equipment information, which will save the buyer THOUSANDS of dollars in equipment costs. I have many many happy customers who have purchased this information as individual plan sets, and do not even consider the cost of the plans themselves, because of the money they saved. Now, you can possess the entire inventory of plan sets as the book How To Build Better Lapidary Equipment, by Bill Gallagher, for a savings of over half, and with this information you can set up a full service lapidary shop for literally pennies on the dollar. With this information you can go into production, if you desire.
My diamond saw plans are the easiest, safest, and most effective plans for this type of equipment anywhere. The Vibrating Tumbler plans introduce a whole new way of achieving vibratory energy for abrasion, and unlike so many of the manufactured competitions machines, my design lasts and lasts and lasts. AND it is a lot simpler than anything out there. Over 3 years of long-hours and self-financed R & D went into that design, and it is a better way. The Flat Laps and Bench Grinders are two good chapters with three or four different designs for the grinders, some mine, some gotten from seeing old timers machines. The Giant Rock Saw is a machine I had only heard about 15 years ago, but I built one about 4 years ago, and it worx. These plans tell how to make the Giant Rock Saw, as well as my improvements made to the basic idea. The only thing not in the book is a facetor plan set, and that is because you would need a machine shop to build a facetor, whereas all the machines included here can be built from salvaged parts and lumber easily, safely, and with very little hassle, and they WORK well for a LONG time! Here is the Table of Contents:
I. How To Build A 6" 8" or 10" Diamond Saw
II. How To Build A Better Vibrating Tumbler
III. How To Build A Flat Laps for Grinding Sanding Polishing
IV. How To Build Bench Grinders From Old Car Parts
V. How To Build A Giant Rock Saw
VI. Trouble Free and Portable Water Source For ALL Lapidary
VII. Abrasion Theory and Application
VIII. Lapidary Shop Tips, Mounting Motors, Motor Attachments, Stone Holders and Jewelers Vise You Can Make Easily, Obtaining Free Abrasives, MORE.
IX. NEW! Build a nice large sized slabbing diamond blade drop saw. Excellent and easy design. Perfect for many things, including splitting geodes, preforming spheres, slabbing larger sized materials. Save big dollars by building this awesome saw.
X. Bill Gallaghers American Jamb Peg Faceting Configuration.  A better way.
This is a book of plan sets which usually sell for 20.00 each.  Special attention has been paid throughout the book to highlight sourcing of materials by salvage, and modification of the plans to match the particular materials at hand. Building these machines is not hard to do, and do right, for anyone with good mechanical and electrical aptitude. Once you have built a machine you never need worry about breakdown again, because you will know it inside and out, and repair is a breeze. 
Please see my other auctions for more.  Write with questions. FREE SHIPPING WORLDWIDE.

Using Wood To Build Lapidary Machines

Terry at Gunn Cues here in Tampa (tampabilliards.com) and I were talking one day about construction of machinery.  He is adept, and a long time user and constructor of many machines, mostly woodworking, because he is a world class cue maker.  He advised me to start using wood to construct the frames and boxes for my lapidary machines;  it would be a lot easier, less expensive, and it would vibrate a lot less.  I had almost always seen lapidary machines in metal, totally metal, angle iron, sheet, bar, all welded and watertight.  This idea of wood flew in the face of my experience, but it was a great suggestion, and one that will be incorporated into the next edition of the book.  There is some leakage, and that can be overcome with fibreglass, but overall, I operate outside most of the time anyway, so the leaks were not a problem, as I drained the machines after use anyway.

I was able to construct things a lot more easily from wood, and yes, much of the vibration was nixed.  Very nice.