A rainy (and perfect) day for rock cutting . . .

Just to prove that it really was a heavy mist, light rain sort of Sunday and absolutely perfect for rock-cutting, here is the obligatory picture of Ink the Cat covered in light droplets. I say is was a perfect day for rock-cutting because it was too nasty to do anything outside yet it was a day you still wanted to accomplish something. Hence - rock-cutting.

Lisa 'Li'l Fish Studios' http://lilfishstudios.blogspot.com/ sent me a rock the size of your knee in a box of goodies earlier this month and the thing was too big to fit in my trimsaw. My friend Jan brought her 12" saw over and we set that noisy monster up in my newly finished side of Ed's garage shop. Here it is jammed into the feeder box with another piece of that common red stuff - glacial till - that acts as a jam to hold everything in place. I could have and should have glued it to a piece of 2x4 and pushed it through the saw using that method but I was wanting to get cutting and gluing requires drying time. And who has the time to wait for glue to dry . . . so I used my fingers. Little Miss Impatient.

These pics show the slow process of cutting into the stone and once again, you never know what you're gonna get. This according to my lapidary instructor of old who equates picking up nondescript 'parking lot' stones with picking up women in bars - you never know what you're gonna get. And again, I digress.

This stone had an agate look on the outside and I'm not sure exactly what we ended up with. I do know that it was hard as all get-out, took forever to slice and it did start to get prettier once I made a few slices into it. You can see that the 'steak fat look' turned to white and orange inclusions with some nice little dendrites. I'm anxious to polish a few bits to see what we've got here.

Just for laughs, here is a lovely shot of me in my Hefty Trash Bag. I'm too cheap to purchase a real rubberized lapidary apron so I have to go this route to keep from soaking my clothes through and through. Yes, a realy Hefty Trash Bag with a drawstring hem.

In the next week as I polish these little guys into something sweet, I'll post the pics for you all to see how fun it is to discover beauty inside of the Rock with No Name. Maybe we'll call it Bowesite . . .