Rhodochrosite

The moonstone is getting me down. I've decided that I'll try to sell the 16x8mm, 13x10mm, 16x9mm, and 14x12mm as is. Assuming there aren't major problems with the polish. I'll repolish the last four moonstones next week. I should be getting my scale in next week and I'll start putting them up on ebay.

In the meantime I'm going to change materials in an effort to get out of my funk.

Here is one of my parcels of rhodochrosite shown wet -



I'm going to flatten the bottoms and mark out the template. As rhodochrosite is soft (3.5 - 4 Moh's scale) I'll not get close to the line with the 100grit wheel. I'm not sure if I'll form the dome on the 220grit wheel or try to do a rough in on the 100grit.

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The 100grit wheel was very fast on this stone. I didn't attempt the dome on that wheel. Nothing bad happened but I'm not going to use the 100grit wheel on my other rhodocrosite parcel.

The 220grit wheel was very fast as well. I was on the edge of my seat while putting in the shallow 45 degree bottom edge.

The stone in the upper left had some gouges into the dome that I couldn't work around. I ended up cutting that stone very thin. You can see the bottom of a gouge in the picture. My daughter will enjoy that stone.