Before you select your material, get familiar with the Mohs scale. Select your slab of rock material. Slabs are large, flat pieces of stone that are available online or at your local rock shop. Going to a rock mine is a fun way to find your own rocks to cab. Try to choose slabs that are free of fractures, pits and cracks, which can cause the stone to split during the cabbing process. Shown here is a slab of malachite. All cabochons have two sides, the top and the bottom.
The top is curved and polished into a dome. The bottom is usually flat and finely sanded, making it easy to insert into jewelry findings. Since the top is displayed, identify a section of your slab that has interesting designs, colors and patterns. Use a gemstone template to draw the outline of the shape you want to create with a fine-point permanent marker. Cut straight lines only, never attempt to cut curves with the saw blade.
This line is a guide and should still be visible once trimmed. While you trim away the excess material, do so in a manner that will maximize the remaining rough stone. Once you are done trimming your cabochon, wash it in warm, soapy water to remove any oil or dirt produced from the trim saw.
The dopping method provides a way to hold your stone while cabbing, which gives you easier control over your cabochon while grinding and polishing. It secures your stone to a stick using a special dop wax as the adhesive. It also saves your fingers from unnecessary abuse. You will need a dop pot , dop wax and dop sticks to perform this step. Some dop pots, such as the DopStation shown below, features a handy storage place for your dop wax, dop sticks and other tools.
Rough grinding removes excess material left from the trim saw and any irregularities found in the stone so it can be successfully smoothed and polished. It also shapes your cabochon and prepares it for the next step. Before we move on, you need to have an understanding of what grit means. Grit generally refers to the size of particles embedded in an abrasive material. In cabbing terms, the particles that are embedded in abrasives are diamonds. The finer, smaller diamonds are used for surface finishing while the larger diamonds are used to shape and remove excess material.
For example, an grit or 80 wheel is a very coarse wheel with large diamond particles, while a 3,grit 3, wheel is a very fine wheel with small diamond particles. The initial, rough grind is usually done with a coarse wheel, such an an 80 diamond grinding wheel. Completely grind the surface of the stone using the lower quarter of the wheel and the whole width to ensure even wear. These scratches slowly diminish with each wheel.
Drying and inspecting your cabochon after each wheel is an important step and shows your progress. Fine grinding is performed with a wheel that has a higher grit than the previous step, such as a diamond grinding wheel. It is good to practice on glass or pre-slabbed minerals before attempting to cabbing more valuable rough gemstone material. This is step by step lapidary instruction on how to make a cabochon from a rough gemstone by preforming, cutting, shaping and polishing it to a highly lustrous, smooth light reflecting convex surface.
I select a piece of rough gem material. In this case it is called Sugilite, a cyclo silicate mineral allied to the manganese mine in the middle of the Kalahari desert in the northern Cape in South Africa.
The place is called Hotazel. The piece is preformed on a diamond lap and then glued to a dop stick with two component epoxy. The stone is cut round using an Imahashi gem cutting machine. I use my gem cutting machine because I have it, not because it is essential to use. A V block, with a wooden dowel stick would work just as well.
If you are new to using pendant trays, DIY craft kits, photo jewelry pieces, and glass cabochons, this tutorial is for you.
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The total time it actually takes to make your pieces is less than 30 minutes but with printing and drying times it can seem a little discouraging your first few tries. However, once you have made 2 or 3 pieces you will be amazed at just how fast you have become.
I have plenty of customers that make these for a living a pretty good one to that have told me they wish there had been a tutorial like this from the get go. DIY Craft Supplies. We are going to make our pendant tray with glass cabochon pieces using inkjet prints as it requires one more step than using color laser prints and because we know most people use a inkjet printer it just makes since.
We like to use a warm moist paper towel to clean our glass cabochons before we start to use them as the last thing you want is foreign debris on your glass when you get ready to start working with it. If you happen to be using color laser prints you can skip this step as laser prints are not using actual ink and the toner dries within minutes. If you are using a inkjet printer we suggest you print your images and allow at least hours of drying time before using your prints.
Preferably you will print them the night before you start your project but some of us are not that patient.. Applying your Microglaze. Step 3: Seal your inkjet prints with Microglaze- Please remember if you are using a color laserjet or having them printed you can skip this step.
Microglaze is a waxy substance that is going to seal your images from the water and liquid properties contained in any glue or adhesives you use to bond your image to your glass like our Lilly Glaze once applied. In this tutorial we use a brush to apply the Microglaze but you can just as easily use the tip of your finger if it is clean.
A small amount of this goes a very long way so use as little as possible. Simply use your brush or finger tip that has the smidge of microglaze on it and cover the entire image. Make sure the entire image is covered with a extra thin waxy looking shine to it. You can make sure by holding it up to a light and looking at it from different angles. You should not see any significant wax build up. Now let the Microglaze absorb into the image and dry for another minutes.
Once you have done that you then want to buff the image out as smooth and as shiny as possible with your finger tip.
You are essentially trying to get rid of all visual traces of the Microglaze and only leaving the protective layer that has absorbed into the paper so get rid of as much as possible. Again, do not apply to much pressure as you do not want any friction to cause the ink under the Microglaze to smudge. It would be the equivalent of buffing out the wax on a car or hard wood floor.
If you leave to much build up on your image you can make your image so slick it will not adhere to the glass. Once you have buffed the Microglaze off of the image let it now dry for a little while longer to be safe. If you plan it correctly you can print your images, apply your microglaze, buff them out, and let them dry overnight so you can start finishing your pieces the next day.
If your glass peals away after you glue your image you have left to much Microglaze. Applying Lilly Glaze. It will cause unwanted air Bubbles in your glaze that can ruin your project. Open your glaze and slowly rotate the bottle upside down allowing the air to escape away from the spout.
The amount of glaze you will apply will depend on the size of glass cabochon you are using. You want to use enough glaze so that you can cover the entire image once you put your glass cabochon on your image but not so much that you over soak the paper causing it to start curling up like a sponge.
This is why we recommend you having extra glass on your first few attempts as this step is usually the one where you will most likely have the steepest learning curve.
Bonding Your Image to your Glass Cabochon.
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