2023-6-10: Sodalite

I recently made a stop at MN Lapidary Supply in Princeton MN. After making a round of high fiving everyone there, I purchased a piece of sodalite. This stuff is a little hard for me to get a perfect polish on it because it is a softer rock and varies in hardness, but as Dave always tells me, "do it again." Thanks for your helpful advice Dave. Without further ado, here it is:

Here's the raw chunk, ready for the saw

Nice slab. It doesn't seem like something natural should be this blue.

Here's one of the pieces I made and took to about a 600 grit polish. I stuck this in the tumbler as an experiment so let's check in on it in about a week.

Here's the other piece I started cutting. I didn't realize sodalite can have the pink color in it, so let's try to capture it.

I'm going to be groove wrapping this, so here's a side view of the groove I pre-cut in to the side of it. I used to do this after cutting the cabochon but I'm going to try it before polishing.

First cut to shape the dome

Lots of nice deep scratches from the 80 grit wheel to get out later

This is after the 280 grit. There's still some scratches so I went back to take care of that.

600 grit. Starting to take a little polish

Here we are after 3000. I didn't take pictures after each grit this time after Dave told me his finger was sore from scrolling so much in my other posts. I'm doing this for you buddy.