Finally spent some quality time with a bit of Aussie goodness. Boulder matrix from the Comet in Koroit, courtesy of Gene McDevitt. Had it home for more than two years (since august 2012) so time was more than due. I first wanted to build an acceptable trim saw to slice them up, which was done last summer. I tried it with a few chunks of local stone, then fed it the less valuable block of the parcel, which had a really nice vein, not very long but with a crazy flash. Had some heating issues at some point which led to a big loss in the rough. While cutting, the slice also broke right smack in the middle, fracturing the good thing into two pieces. Oh, well. I was planning an autofeed on that saw anyway so that's a good reason if I needed one.
So for starters, the cleaned-up and preformed half of the opal vein:
Once finished:
With the matrix and second bit:
In its full glory next to the ruler (in millimeters):
Man, is that stuff hard to shoot, or what.
For the guys of the Dremel thread, after slicing it with my homemade tabletop trim saw, I cut it and polished it with the Dremel, ebay diamond disk, then soft mandrel with 1200 grit wet/dry sandpaper (used dry) then the buffing wheel (still on the Dremel) with 50k diamond paste. The surface finish could be better when viewed under 20x mag, but to the naked eye it's actually better than a lot of commercial stuff...
