Had two stones that I had to grind smaller as one had a hidden cavity and another broke along a cleavage line and around five more that due to its shape I had to make a short bezel line. I'll have to work the dome down more on those.
I think the blackish ones with a bit of sparkle as well as the small red stone might be too soft to take a polish with the tripoli and cerium oxide. Not too concerned with these. Nor am I interested in getting the grit to deal with soft stones at this time.
I found the marble looking stones as well as the flat quartz(?) stones to be interesting. First, they were much harder than what I was expecting. The quartz might be explained because of how large they are. They are the largest stones I've worked so far and are about as large as I can work on a 6" x 1" wheel. The marble-like ones are a mystery to me. Before cutting they looked white with pink zones and darker lines running throughout. But on cutting they showed varying shades of red. I'm curious as to what they'll look like polished.
At the time it seemed like a good idea to grind all of the stones to near template in one go and work smaller batches to completion. Now, with my back and chest (crouched at the grinder) complaining, I'm not so sure.
