Lapidary combo Options

[James and Cyndi]

Breaking into the piggy bank and going to Casper on Thursday to check out this little unit.

[James and Cyndi]

Thanks CP. Did some research and with the diamond carbide wheels it is nessesary to have more wheels with progressively finer grit. I have opted to use silicone for now. I read with the expandable drum belts using silicone carbide belts, all that is needed is to get down to 600 grit because it wears and effectively becomes the finer grit. So a little extra work changing and saving used belts but I blew my load on this machine and cant yet afford the upgrades. But scored some goodies at little cost thru an estate sale on friday. A couple slightly used silicone carbide wheels 100 and 220, a box of about 75 or so belts, about 10 lbs tripoli, 2 lbs cerium oxide and some other small amounts of other compounds im not familiar with. Also, a few extra polishing laps for using the various compounds separately from one another.
Got her up and running today and made a Frickin mess over filling my saw oil resevoir. Did I mention I tend to learn things the hard way. Missing the front splash guard so had to ghetto rig one. Then found out how much mist that thing creates and made me realize that it probably had a dome on it originally. I also noticed that I should be able to set it up as a gravity self feed. I couldn't resist cutting something despite needing some more thought for splash control. So I cut a geode of unknown origin that i found in a box the other day of some minerals I collected as a kid. (Mostly store bought) Frickin time capsule... the newspaper packed in the box were from 1997. Never got unpacked since I guess. Funny timing on finding the box.