Hello all......newbie here

Hello everyone,
This will be a little long so bear with me. Originally out of Philadelphia, PA and still own a property there, but I am retired and also reside in Quartzsite, Arizona (The Gathering Place). My 1st love is fine art and painting; I now do a lot of lapidary work....stone cutting, shaping and polishing, Work field experiences....restaurant cooking, general maintenance including HVAC, furniture finishing, refinishing, repairs, making, longshoreman/stevedore/cooper/woodbutcher, illustrator/draftsman (Philco-Ford, Us Army), Water Purification Plant Operator and Waste Water Treatment Operator/shift supervisor with the City of Philadelphia 24 yrs ,Lapirary/self employed, auto maintenance and body and fender work. I've handled a lot of chemicals in my career and still do.
Hobbies interests....auto maintenance, ATV maintenance, painting, extreme lapidary which requires mfg. my own equipment, jewelry making, furniture building, RV remodeling, rock saw mfg., sewing, mining rocks and minerals, photography, fiberglass work, welding, machine shop work. cheers.....mikey

Hi mikey - welcome to HomemadeTools.net :welcome:

Sounds like you have a very wide skill set! If you have pics of your homemade lapidary equipment, please post away :)

Yes Jon I will begin to get that together and work on how to post it here. Some will be delayed because I am making a trip to Philly to pick up storage cabinets, hardware, elec. motors, and a 24" rock saw or two and checking my Philly property. A 6,000 mile round trip which will take 4 to 5 weeks. A wide skill range developed through the help of a lot of very talented generous people that shared a great deal with me. So I try to be generous with sharing because so much was a gift to me.

Hi mikey,

Welcome - glad to have you here! :welcome:

What a broad and fascinating skill set! I'm not sure, but you may be our first serious lapidarist. I'm looking forward to seeing your work and associated tools when you return home.

What's next on your project list?

Ken

My immediate project is putting sides and tie down points on my new 30 ft, flat deck, 3 axle trailer I just bought for my trip to the east coast. That will be fairly simple and straightforward, I hope. It is primarily going to require welding U shaped steel pieces to the frame that will accept 2x4 up right's. The front wall will be all steel frame permanently welded in place. Tie downs will be large u-bolts I saved that had been cut off trailer axels. This trailer will allow me a load capacity of about 9,000 lbs. Then my F-250 with airbag rear support can also comfortably handle a ton as well. It's a 7.3 L diesel so it'll pull it nicely and stop well because it has an engine brake chip installed that works beautifully. I have 4 other major projects in the works and a 5th on the drawing board and are all lapidary related. Two are rotating flat laps for grinding and polishing rock slices flat, along with bringing them to a mirror finish. I already have a 3 ft and a 4 ft disc's of 1/2" thick steel plates for the rotating tops. The third project is minor speed reduction changes to a "little" paint mixer machine to turn it into a rock tumbler. This was used to mix two 55 gal drums of paint (one yellow and one white) at a time. I need to change out the drive chain sprocket for a larger one to reduce it's speed. The barrels sit on sixteen 10" hand truck tires which are ready for replacements as well. Tumble capacity is about 450 lbs of rock per barrel. The correct barrels is going to be the difficult problem with this project and will require a few trials and variants to find success. #4 project is taking a electric golf cart and mounting my engine hoist stand to it so I can lift and drive these barrels of rock around my yard. These are just the immediate projects pending and they need to be finished by Nov 1st. ha ha ha ha....well at least one rotating table has to be finished by then. Photos and further descriptions as I can figure how to load them here. The current batch of rock saw I have or use goes from 4" to 36" and I have about 35 of them. Those are a complete separate area of projects and continuous rebuilding. I'm also building myself some furniture with all my spare time. t

Hey Mike!

I'm wondering if you ever posted any of your lapidary equipment on this site. I'm here primarily trying to find info on how to make a faceting machine. I'd be willing to bet you might be able to give me some direction on that.