2022-9-18: Double rainbow!

Here's the slab dry, under normal light. Looks a little different huh. Not exactly sure what to expect with this experiment.

Time for some slicing and dicing. I thought an egg is a pretty sweet shape so that's what I chose for this. If I have any luck, I can also get another lil' something out of the middle of the slab.

This is one case where I cut the obsidian without it cutting me. This stuff is sharp, and tends to chip instead of cut so be careful cuz I ended up with little chips all over my work space.

And now we shape it on a rough wheel. I'm learning to do this one handed so I can take pictures at the same time, or surf the web. I'm sure there's no other way.

Ok, shape is looking good. Here it is with some pretty bright light head on. Wait for it....

Tilt it a little and you can taste the rainbow. Now I'm excited, can you tell?

Since I was hoping these would be premier examples of Agate Whisperer excellence, I decided to give the backs a little love. Again, major snooze fest with doing this.

Now that the backs are out of the way, we glue them to the dop stick with some wax and mark the girdle.

First angled cut for the dome. If you have a different way of doing this... please email me and let me know. I'm always looking for a more consistent way to do this.

The second cut is made by basically taking down the ridge of the first cut and the top. That water drip looks pretty sweet.

Once everything is mostly the shape you want it, we take the first soft wheel and smooth everything out. Here's a crappy picture that focused on my fingers instead of the rock to illustrate what it looks like. Most importantly, make sure there's no little flat spot on the top. That will cause donations to the swear jar later.

I think this was a picture after the 3k grit. For some reason, obsidian doesn't take a great polish for me until the last step.

I usually dab on a little shaving cream as shown in the picture, and then polish on the leather wheel.

Now that's a shine. Amazing how much the last step smooths things out.

Under some different lighting to show the sheen.

And again

These really pop in the sunlight!

Double Rainbow!!

One more quick before and after. Here they are in normal light...

Here they are under some more direct light.