I get most of my rock 1) online, at auctions, miner sites, rock shop sites, and so forth, 2) at rock shops or rockhound shops all over the state, 3) at gem and mineral shows, 4) trading with other lapidarists. Being somewhat new to this, my collection is not huge and wonderful. People who have been at it longer have tremendous collections of great rock. I'm getting there quickly!

Next the rock is sliced, almost like a loaf of bread. This takes a slab saw, a noisy messy smelly tool. It is great fun, because each slab is a surprise. Slabbing some rocks is tricky, because if the rock is not oriented correctly, attractive features such as adularescence, schiller effect, sagenite, and chatoyance may be diminished or lost.

Normally for cabochons the slab is about 1/4 inch, although it may be much thicker, or thinner for particular effects or expensive rock. The coolant oil then is cleaned from the slab.

To actually make a cabochon, the slab must be trimmed roughly to the desired shape of the final cabochon. So one looks over the slab, identifying the best areas, and cuts them out on a trim saw, as close to the final shape as is possible. Sometimes there are surprises here too. Rock that survived the slab saw may disintegrate when trimming, coming apart at fractures. The chosen desirable features may turn out to be weak or soft.

About now the chunks are put on dop sticks. I do the rough shaping by hand usually, unless the piece is very small. I usually dop after 120, before sanding, but many people dop before grinding. Dopping is attaching the piece of rock to a section of dowel, or a nail or something else, in order to have a handle to provide leverage and maneuverability. It is attached using glues, usually cyanoacrylates, or dop wax. I mostly use dop wax, which must be melted and glommed onto the end of the dop stick, which is then applied to the heated stone.

If we have made it this far, the chunk is then shaped on a grinder. People use silicon carbide sometimes, but most cabbers use diamond wheels lubricated with water. Once the shape is good, the piece is beveled top and bottom, the girdle refined, and generally perfected on the hard wheels. I use two, a 60 grit textured wheel for rough cutting, and a 120 grit wheel to get finer details. The most important aspect is shaping the dome, which is what people really see and notice. Of course, the piece can fail at any time.

Next are sanding steps, in which the rock is smoothed on finer and finer grits, lubricated again with water. As the grit gets finer, less rock is removed. Each step is important. The piece is repeatedly dried and inspected to make sure no scratches from a previous grit have been missed, that the shape and girdle are still good, and that no weaknesses or flaws have arisen. No shortcuts can be taken here, missed scratches or problems will not work out later.

Polishing is the last stage, and again the piece is worked against progressively finer grits. Care must be taken to avoid contaminating grit with coarser particles of grit or rock. Many pieces will get a final polish with cerium or some other polish. Some rock won't polish well with diamond, on other rock using cerium will destroy the 50K polish by undercutting. The cab is then removed from the dop stick and cleaned.

If the back of the cab is to be polished, it will be dopped from the top and go through the process on the back. Usually this is straightforward, but if there is significant saw scuff it can be problematic, or if the rock is very soft the shape can be compromised. Some people feel a cab is not complete until the back is polished. Others never polish the back, feeling it is a waste of time on an area that won't be seen. I'm in the middle, I polish the backs of all transparent or translucent materal, and some others if I feel like it or see a need.

Many other steps may be involved, such as stabilizing, filling with epoxy, duplexing or triplexing, and more detailed design and calibration.

Once the cab itself is complete and clean, it may be stored in various ways to protect it. At this point, I scan each for an image, measure length, width and thickness, put each into a database, and decide if a cab is good enough to put on this site. If so, I post it. If not, some I keep just because I like them, others go into a pile to use in concrete projects or whatever. The decent ones go into little ziplock bags with identifying information, and are filed so I can locate them readily.

I have just completed over 600 cabs, and roughly 400 are posted. About 70% of what isn't posted isn't very good. I'd say 80% of the ones that finish polishing are good. I need to improve in recognizing the losers sooner. Probably of the ones that start the process, 70% make it through polishing, and I need to reduce this so I'm not wasting time polishing cabs that aren't worthwhile. Perhaps 50% of the starters should be rejected before polishing. Hard to estimate, but lots of them fail or are rejected somewhere along the line.

If you want to know more about cabbing, Shain Mayer runs a forum where cabbers discuss their challenges and concerns, and there are tutorials and lots of information.