cabbing stone on a lathe

Seems like you'd want to dedicate a lathe on its last legs to this and/or turning soapstone/alabaster/etc. The abrasive dust and/or slurry will be hard on bearings and ways, and difficult to fully contain.

I have never gotten into cabuchons, but I spent a decade or so of my youth tending a rock tumbler.

Doesn't sound impossible. Dop wax to hold the flat side to the faceplate or such, and something to grip a rotary tool firmly to maneuver around. A metal lathe with a nice X-Y would feed slowly enough, that's for sure.

But why not get a mandrel and a washing machine motor. Not like you need the other things a lathe has.

"Ecnerwal" wrote: (clip) The abrasive dust and/or slurry will be hard on bearings and ways, and difficult to fully contain. (clip) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ That makes sense. OTOH, I bought my Stubby from Larry Osterman, who had been using it to turn stone, and I have never detected any after-effects. He sold the Stubby because it wasn't heavy enough for the pieces he was spinning, and upgraded to a custom-build Nichols. It was awesome--even had a crane built on.

I cab on a Diamond Pacific Genie, but would never cab on my lathe. Most cabbing is done with silicon carbide, or preferably, diamond wheels starting around 80 grit and working up to 12,000 or so before final polishing. Both types of cutting abrasive require a continuous stream of water as a lubricant and coolant. Grinding without water can destroy a wheel in seconds.

The stones that are cabbed run up to 8 or higher on the Mohs scale, and prodigious quantities of stone dust as up to half the volume of the blanks are ground away.

The water, abrasive dust, and the swarf generated would surely do a great deal of damage to your lathe. Especially since the water slings off the wheels carrying along the swarf as it goes.

I can only assume that you want to mount the grinding wheel on the lathe, as mounting the cab blank itself doesn't seem to make much sense to me.

Why not just mount the grinding wheels on a shaft supported in a pillow block bearing? It would be easy to add protective cowling around the wheels. A drip system or water spray can be economically added to provide the cooling necessary. Plans are available in a number of places on the web, one of which is available here

A rock saw can be built in basically the same way, except of course that the saw needs a lubricant well rather than only a spray. There are also gem and mineral clubs around that often have equipment available for their members. More importantly, like lathe clubs, they can provide a great deal of experience and advice to the new comer.

Enjoy.

T> I am becoming interested in cabbing stones. Like most hobbies cabbing is

Thanks M for a good post full of useful information. No clubs in my area. I had already found that the eclectic lapidary but was trying to be too cheap (as usual for a Pennsylvania Dutchman). I knew it was a far fetched idea but thought I'd ask any way. Tony Manella

Save those small chunks of burl or weird figure you find around knots, or even the knots themselves and make cabochons out of them. Really dress up the lid of a box. They turn well on the lathe.

Hi Tony

You certainly can do some stone turning on your lathe, as long as you keep the stones used in the "soft" catogory, like soapstone and serpentine or alabaster, they can be turned with regular HSS scrapers or with carbide bids added to them, you do get a lot of dust and have to take care of that.

I wouldn't try the hard stuff, where you'd need a constant stream of coolant with the water/slurry flung around, doesn't mean it can't be done, with trays and baffles, but it still would be a mess.

A small piece of rock glued to a chunk of wood held on your lathe, water running over it and a hand held air powered tool with some diamond coated tool in it, should work, and you'd better wear some rain gear. ;-)))

I have made a couple of cabochons from bone, and they polished up nice, though I doubt they come close to a real gemstone cabochon.

Link to a place that does sell the stone you could try turning,

Have fun and take care Leo Van Der Loo

Tony here are a couple more links for perusal.

Have fun and take care Leo Van Der Loo

Thanks George, I've been doing that for years. Actually got a 40# box of burl scraps that Bob Rosand was throwing into the fire. Lots of great stuff there.

Thanks Leo. Don't really want to turn wood. My 6 year old daughter has become very interested in rocks and has a nice collection of specimens going. Just was trying to find a way to shape and polish with out the large expense of specialized equipment. I just ordered a book on lapidary that tells how to do this using common tools from Lowes and Home Depot. That should be good enough as I'm only looking to do a few.