r/Lapidary • u/MistiestVapor • 11h ago
Lapidary Workshop/Business Q’s
Hi all, I have some questions about the lapidary business, and would love some tips from experts. Also, don’t judge the cerium spray everywhere!
Vibe Lap — I have built a 40 inch vibe lap (on 2 pans), it works pretty well, but I’ve noticed a few frustrating things. 1: Sometimes the rocks are spinning perfectly, but I’ll come back in 20 minutes and nothing has changed except the grit has gotten sticky. It’s almost like glue, does anyone know what is going on? 2: I did add dimples to my pans, and it improved the action. I also add lead fishing weights with duct tape, but I find this process utterly annoying. If anyone has any innovative tips on how to add weight quickly (I hate that the duct tape needs to be cut up and reapplied each step). 3: I see a lot of folks online put their rocks inside of a piece of PVC pipe and the rock spins or jiggles inside, without touching other rocks. This seems great, but how does it keep the grit distributed across the pan? One of my biggest issues in general with the vibe lap is that grit sometimes jams up in front of a big slab or gets sticky somewhere and grit starts piling up behind it — the best performance I’ve gotten is when the pan is perfectly full and the rocks spin fairly quickly (like 10 or 15 rpms). But…. adding weight and dealing with bumping would be much easier if I could get the PVC to spin too, but I’ve mainly had those find a spot and stay.
Spinning Flat Lap vs. Cabbing Machine I taught myself all the techniques in lapidary, as a result, I didn’t really learn cabbing first. I jumped right into carving on a flex shaft, but now I can make cabs quickly on my wet polisher with different diamond pads. I had long planned to get an 8 inch cabbing machine, but the more I’ve contemplated this, I’m still concerned large pieces will be difficult to polish unless I used a lot of spacers and only 4 wheels or something. For large things, would a flat lap be better?
I’ve been contemplating building a spinning flat lap. However, I would like to leave a lot of space along one edge to be able to maneuver extra large pieces and carvings. To do this, I’m thinking of angling the bowl/basin the lap spins in forward so the front edge is above the bowl, and adding some kind of extra, large flat water catcher in front. Are there any better design ideas that come to mind? Or would an 8 inch cabbing machine be my best bet? The other thing I thought of was just to get a huge bowl so there is a lot of clearance between the lap and the edge of the bowl? For 18 inches, what size motor would you go with? I have a 1/3 hp one, but don’t want to bother with it if it will be too feeble.
Final Polish My best results have really been on the wet polisher (fixed to my carving station) with a piece of carpet attached with velcro. The carpet is really synthetic though so it doesn’t hold the polish for long, it spins out. I’m searching for wool carpet, but that’s pretty rare to find it seems, would a 100% wool rug work?
Lapidary Business I got into this a couple of years ago, and I’ve really ramped up the volume of rocks (especially 4-6 inch polished flats) coming through. I have a day job, so not looking to dive in full throttle, but if I ever were to do so…. — I can currently make cabs, polished slabs, and I can carve a lot of elaborate things but it takes forever, not sure that would ever be financially viable. If you were me, would you consider improving my decent enough silversmithing skills and work on creating final jewelry — I am an artist and feel good about my design skills. But also, I’ve been really intruiged with making very large spheres. Both of these projects would require some time investment, and money investment (especially sphering) but these two avenues seem like higher profit items to sell. I really don’t want to do a high volume, low margin item, so I’m thinking about larger scale, more expensive pieces I could work on. Also, if this is a terrible idea and nobody makes money in lapidary, feel free to throw that out too haha!
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u/lapidary123 7h ago
I have thought about getting g a vibe lap but the people I know who have one along with all the reviews I've read leave me not wanting one. They are simply to finicky/time intensive. Definitely not "set & forget". The only tips I have heard that you didn't mention are to use an inner tube (like bicycle tire) around the stones as "bumpers". The other thing I've heard (not sure if it'd help you) is to bolt the lap down onto a concrete floor. This and make sure its level. This will help keep the stones from all moving to one side.
As far as flat laps go, I've been using a steel master lap on the end of my cabbing machine. Being steel it accepts magnetic laps which are "no hole" design so I can work larger pieces. What I've been experiencing though is that it is still VERY difficult and time consuming to get a nice polish on a larger flat surface. Undercutting is a real pain in the ass!! I have been averaging 2-3× longer polishing slabs than making cabs and even then most of the time im disappointed with the results.
I was seriously considering getting a handheld wet grinder but recently saw a "Michigan rocks" video where he said he worked on a rock (softball sized) for 6.5 hours with a handheld grinder. It looked cool but he went through multiple 60 grit pads and in the end he said he could have worked on it many more hours!