Last night I was able to meet Mike Kolesar a local lapidary in Fargo who does a lot of work with cabochons.  Mike and I got together to saw a 30.5 carat piece of Mahenge Spinel and after we had completed that job he offered to have me cab a stone.  Since I have never cabbed a stone before I thought it would be fun to do.  I was right!  Mike had me work with some blue forest petrified wood he had on hand.  I did a standard oval shape which had turned into more of an egg after I was done with it.  For my first cab it turned out well and only took about 2 hours compared with my first faceted stone which took 8 hours to complete.   Pictures of the process are below.

This is the piece of blue forest petrified wood we used for my first cab.

 

Image showing the wood without flash. Notice the lines and Mikes illustration of how to create the outline for the cabochon

 

This is a picture of Mike sawing his piece of rough.

 

In this picture you can see just how close Mike gets to the lines on his piece of rough. The saw blade is only about a half inch from his picture in this shot

 

Mikes nicely sawn piece on the left, and my mangled piece of sawed wood on the right. I will have to finish out the shape on the 100 grit diamond wheel.

 

Rounding out the shape and dome on the cabochon

 

This is a picture of the rounded out cabochon before polishing

 

Mike holding my finished stone. Total cutting time was just over 2 hours. I had a blast with Mike and will be offering his cabbing services to my clients in the future.