The Frankenstein Lapidary Line
The Frankenstein Lapidary Line
We don’t recognize the word “can’t” in this shop. Can’t can’t, because can’t gave up. One of the issues we kept hearing was that people can’t keep their stone on the dop stick without superglue. Turns out there is a better way — see more → The Dop Sticks & The Car Detailer’s Secret.
The Grinder, the Buddy, and the Two Motors
Back in 1996, a buddy of mine gave me an old Columbia 6-inch bench grinder. He threw in a second backup motor because he wasn’t sure the first one worked. It was just a wiring problem. I fixed it and used that grinder for metal work for years.
In 2022, Janyce and I had been collecting rocks our whole lives on a small scale. I decided to start trying to polish the quartz stones in my yard. I found out fast that it needed to be done wet, with coolant, and I needed diamond wheels. The grinder I had was a gutted Columbia with a 1964 International Scout water pump V-belt running to a 1750 RPM 110v motor, a frayed cord, and no on/off switch. My biggest fear was electrocution.
Fish Tank Tubing and the Dolphin Fountain
By now Janyce had gotten into the build. I dug up some fish tank tubing from my son’s old tank in the shop — no fish anymore. I needed a water pump. Janyce grinned at me and said, “What about that dolphin fountain in storage?”
We pulled the little pump out of the bottom. It wouldn’t pump water up from a bucket on the floor, so eventually we put the bucket up on a milk crate on the table inside a Tidy Cats bucket. It still wasn’t enough water to wet both wheels. I found an old cookie sheet that fit perfect under the grinder — the same one I’d been using in the BBQ to put applewood on for smoking burgers. I had to trim one of the 2x6 board frame pieces down two inches to make it fit. Drilled a hole in the corner, put a bucket under it, and started grinding my first rock using the regular grinding stones that came with the grinder.
The Diamond Wheels Arrive
The first two diamond wheels were a 80-grit hard diamond wheel and a 600-grit soft wheel, 6 inch, $100 each. We made our first real stones on those wheels. Those are the stones that started it all — see more → The Shopped Rock.
The problem was every 30 minutes you had to swap buckets and the pump would run dry. It was messy. That’s when Pump #2 came in — and the Banshee flat lap came with it. See more → The Banshee Flat Lap.
The Evolution of the Cooling System
With two machines running, we upgraded to a 6-gallon-per-minute pump on the floor recirculating the water. No more swapping buckets. We could still only run one machine at a time, but at least we weren’t losing water.
That pump burned out. The rock mud — the slurry — got into it and killed it. Complete slurry overdose.
That failure built Pump #3 — the Tidy Cats Triple-Settling System. I plumbed a massive pump into a tower of stacked Purina Tidy Cats litter buckets. We’d been collecting those buckets since we rescued Sox and NayNay. The heavy rock mud settles to the bottom as the water cycles through the stack. The finer particles get caught before they hit the pump by green kitchen scrubbies held in place with wooden clothespins.
The last piece of the puzzle was the water itself. At 1750 RPMs, the wheels were slinging the coolant right off — it wasn’t staying where it needed to be. I asked an AI for help and it suggested a little Dawn dish soap in the cooling water to break the surface tension. I was skeptical. It worked immediately. The water started clinging to the wheels instead of flying off. What I didn’t expect was the bonus: the Dawn keeps the wheels clean and flushes the tubing out too. We only change the water every couple of months. That wasn’t my idea and I’m giving credit where it’s due.
This is what Frank looks like today. Janyce runs it as much as I do.
It isn’t pretty. But in this shop, if it doesn’t work exactly how we want it to, we tear it down, scrounge some parts, and build it better.
The Banshee Flat Lap →
The Dop Sticks & The Car Detailer’s Secret →
Stabilizing Stone →
— Bob & Janyce, Rockhound Studio, Spokane Valley WA