Progress is Progress no matter how small.

I did manage to make three cabs today. One of them was superglued on a screw, and I don’t particularly care for that method of dopping, however the other two I made I used my new suction cup on a stick to cab them. Unfortunately, the suction cup wasn’t working well, so I trimmed it with scissors, and then ground it down a bit on the wheels to get the suction to hold much better. I should be able to cab stones up to 2-3″ in diameter with this method, and as small as half inch. Then I went searching for a new tool to work with smaller stones, and I found one for only $80… $80 I don’t have to spend on the tool, but I bookmarked it, so maybe later I’ll have the funds for it.

So the three cabs I made. 2 of them are petoskey stones. One of them had some imperfections in the stone, and as a result there are some pits in the material, after the final polish was applied. There’s nothing I can do to fix the holes, other than sealing them with epoxy, and then repolishing the stone. I was concerned it was a material flaw, and all of them would have similar holes, but the other one I did, came out perfect in every way, and no holes were present in the material.

I’m using a Woods Pwr Grip vertical handle suction tool for moving glass around as my dop stick. I now own two of them, since I failed to return the first one they sent me, that didn’t have a suction cup, and I’m ok with the extra expenditure this month, as I believe I’ll be making some suction cups to fit on the tool, while the first one has a removeable cup, the second one that didn’t come with a cup, I’ll be trying to figure out how to make a suction cup for it, possibly out of silicone caulk, maybe….

One important thing to note, that while you can use this suction cup dop method, it’s only suitable for cabs, as the point is to round the top, instead of faceting it. The suction cup does hold the stone well, and if it pops off, or you need to pop it off it’s a fast on/off, and enough control to cab. But the suction cup method has one glaring drawback, and that is that because the rubber gives a bit, it isn’t suitable at all for faceting.

I haven’t made any progress on the site today, but when I get as far as starting to add product, I think I have all my categories made, and then there’s the ecommerce plugin I still need to figure out. I hope to start getting product setup, and on the site soon, as I need to start making money. Then it’s going to be a lot of promoting, and figuring out how to get my site out to the world to see.

Tomorrow, I’ll make more cabs, and maybe I’ll remember to take some pictures for tomorrows post.