[The Shining Diamond] Cutting Cabos

by **Kelski** on November 30th, 2014, 7:21 am

Timestamp: Early Fall, 514 AV

Guando Li was a merciless teacher when it came to his apprentices, not that Kelski minded. Li filled her days with work, first learning basic techniques and then moving on to more technical aspects of her work. Her master let her do gentle metal smithing, like cutting and linking chain for necklaces. She had the eyesight and patience to do it. But when it came to things like faceting, Li was more cautious and started her out small. One of the main things he protected her from was the loud water-driven equipment, though in truth she didn't mind the sound of the lap wheels grinding away at gemstones.

So after much persuasion and begging, Kelski was able to talk Li into teaching her more about cutting gems and making things like cabochons. He started his lecture out simplistic enough.

"First, before we begin, you need to understand what a cabochon is." He said, pulling out several examples. "Cutting a cabochon or 'cabbing' is the simplest and easiest form of gem cutting. It's the best place to start for a jewelcrafter. We use cabs in almost everything from belt buckles to buttons to horse bridle adornments. They consist of gems or even common stone that are cut with a flat bottom and a curved or domed top. Pendants are commonly made from Cabs, and cabochons are used as the basis for carvings such as cameos." Kelski nodded.

"We start our cuts from slices. So lets see.... go pick up a stone you like, one of the less valuable ones from the supply vault, perhaps something as big as your hand or so, and cut some slices out of it. I'd like the slices thick, Kelski, perhaps an inch or so deep. We'll start there, alright?" Kelski nodded.

She already knew how to make basic cuts like slices on the machines, so she slipped into the vault and looked around. The Kelvic honestly grabbed the first thing she could lay her hands on in her excitement, noting there was a large batch of Blue Lace Agate and several pieces of it that were fist sized.

Returning, she reset the water mill flow so that the cutter was hooked to their source of power and set the big diamond cutting wheel into motion. First, she set the stoppers so that the wheel would take a cut through the stone near the edge, then she set the stone, tightened it into place with the guides, and let the cutting wheel drop so that it began grinding away at the fist sized blue lace agate.

While it was making its first cuts, Kelski fetched a bucket of milky water that was really full of fine grit and sand, took a dipper, and began to carefully pour water over the cutter as it was grinding its way through the stone. Not only did it make the cutting easier, but it also made the cut smoother as the water was abrasive as well. She watched the cutter work, digging into the agate, until it was cut all the way through. The process took time because the wheel wasn't fast, and depended upon its own gravity and weight to push it through. Larger stones could take bells, while smaller stones took chimes.

When the slice was done, she pushed the stone over, reset the braces, and started the next cut for the slice. She adjusted the blade, allotting for width, and started a second cut that would make the slice she was taking off the stone exactly an inch wide. She poured water as the blade cut, and watched out of the corner of her eye as Li went into the showroom and helped a customer with an appointment pick out a set of pearls for his wife.

Kelski finished the slice, returned the original now partially sliced blue laced agate chunk to the vault. The Kelvic kept the scrap piece from the first cut and the slice Li had requested she made and set it on the workbench so he could continue the lesson and she could start making cabos.

by **Kelski** on May 24th, 2015, 4:22 pm

Li returned after he made his sale and continued with his lecture, while at the same time examining her work on the slice. “Neatly done. I’m glad you saved the scrap too. We can make things from that as well – smaller cabochons, beads, or even faceted gems to put in inexpensive rings – so nothing goes to waste.” Kelski nodded.

“We’re going to do some Okomo bridle decorations with this one since the stone light blue, a shinya color of luck, and they are good sellers. Here’s some blanks that we need gemstones cut to put in.” Li said, setting down a box that rattled slightly with the metal blanks in them.

Kelski raised her eyebrow, her eyes moving towards Li and back towards the blanks. “What are blanks?” She asked, curiously.

Li plucked one from the box and set it on the table in front of her and carefully explained. It was in essence a metal gemstone holder, consisting of a flat oval piece of silver with a rim around it one fit a stone into. One could then solder them onto the metal fittings of the Okomo harness, secure in the knowledge the blank would hold the cabochon tightly because the rim was usually bent or clamped down on the stone and the stone also affixed into the metal with adhesive. They look sand-casted, something Li was going to teach her soon or so he promised. Kelski examined the one before her carefully, recognizing she’d have to cut the stone perfectly to fit it into the blank. She nodded, glancing at Li for direction.

“Take the blank and trace around it with a grease pencil on the slice… like one is cutting out cookies from dough with a cookie cutter. Try to get as many of these off the slice as you can. Then take the cutter and cut them out like you would cutting out perhaps cookies. Use the number three blade on the wheel. It is most effective for this sort of slice. You might find it easier to cut them as if they were square, and round the corners off later once we attach it to a dop stick.” Her master said, causing Kelski to nod. The Kelvic went to work, taking the blanks and tracing around them on the stone slice with a grease pencil. She kept them in line, eying the cutting blade she’d be using on the alternative grinding wheel. It was not so hard to cut around small shapes on a circular saw AFTER they were cut out in strips. But it was near impossible to cut out the shapes with them being laid out on the stone slice haphazardly.

The Kelvic worked quickly but neatly. She liked this kind of task because it gave her time to think as she worked yet kept her fingers busy.

Kelski made short work of it, and when she was done she sat down at the cutting wheel, got the wheel set in motion with the action of her foot treadle and began cutting the cabs out in strips. Once a strip was cut out, she then made individual cuts, freeing the cabos in rough square shapes she knew she could then grind into a circle on the grinder.

When she was done, she had roughly as many ‘squares’ as she had oval blanks.

by **Kelski** on May 24th, 2015, 4:33 pm

Once Kelski had a dozen rough shapes, she dipped the dop stick into glue, pressed it on the first cabochon and waited until the flat part of the stone was glued to the lengthy stick. The stick gave the jewelcrafter control, letting them hold a tiny stone against a grinding wheel to say dome its top without risking her fingers. Taking more dop sticks, she did the same thing until she’d used all the available sticks. Then she took the tray she was working from over to the grinder and set the waterwheel up so that the pressure was working on the grinder, turning it. Kelski then picked up the closest dop stick with the gem now attached to the end like a lollipop, and held it up down on the flat grinding stone, and began working the square edges into a round oval shape.

Li came over at this point, readjusted her grip, and demonstrated with another of her already dop stick mounted stones. “Girl, the perfect dome is in the wrist. If you hold the cabo rigid, it will cut a bunch of flat spots instead of giving you a nice dome shape. Instead, gently hold the stick, keep your wrist and fingers loose, and let it dance across the grinder. The dome will come out even and you won’t have flat overworked spots in the material.” Li said grinding one of the cabo’s for her. He also then showed her how to do the same thing holding the stone on edge to take the corners off and get neat perfectly smooth round edges.

Kelski was surprised. The stones danced, even attached to the dop stick, across the grinder of their own accord, and really shaped themselves well. The kelvic kept checking back at her work, slowly trying to make the cuts so they could tightly fit into the blanks. That entailed making them BIGGER than the blanks initially because then the fine sanding and polishing would take them down to the perfect size.

It took hours. Her back grew stiff, her shoulders tight, and she got a cramp in one thigh because she was bent over the jewelers bench so long and hadn’t noticed she’d started to gently bounce one leg up and down to release nervous energy.
But still there was more work. Kelski didn’t know how Li had managed without her before. And she also finally understood the stoop in his old back and why he walked with such stiffness. After work, she decided she’d fly to someplace nice, like the hotsprings, and soak away her soreness after a bath.

Kelski also found out quickly that if one let one’s mind wander – say to how nice the hotsprings would feel after work – ones cabs tended to lose their perfect oval shape and all but ruin the stone. Luckily she discovered this early and only had to toss one in the scrap gem box.

Once she had the shapes she wanted, Kelski changed wheels under Li’s supervision, and began the slow process of slightly polishing the edges and then the face to get a nice finished look. She kept one side flat, the side that would nest into the cabo blanks, and kept working the stone until it looked perfect. She’d pause periodically, testing each stone against each blank she was fitting it too, and then restarted again, making corrections. It was easy to take off too much… so it was far better to leave more than she needed to make the stone work through the polish phase.

When she was done, she had a about four dozen stones cut to the silver blanks.

by **Kelski** on May 24th, 2015, 6:19 pm

Li checked on her work at that point and nodded his satisfaction.

“These are well shaped. You have a good eye for detail, Kelski. However, see how milky these stones are now? Abraded from the wheel? We need to teach you how to do the final hand polish and we need to teach you some techniques in making the final shine happen. Most people think the gleam we get in gemstones is just from the gemstone itself, but that would be incorrect. And that’s why most jewelry needs polishing and cleaning regularly. If the stones shined on their own, then we’d simply send them out the door and never see them again, missing out on the cleaning and polishing fees. But stones need maintenance. And to do that we need to make some polishes and finishes and then apply them to the stones. Leave these here, attached to their dop sticks and we’ll come back to them. Let us go back to the philtering part of the workshop.” He said, beckoning the Kelvic to follow him.

Kelski followed her Master quietly, knowing the part of the workshop he was talking about. It was a philtering lab of sorts with a distiller, some braziers that acted as burners, and a lot of chemicals.

“You’ll need to know several things to finish the cabos, their mountings, and their finishes. I also haven’t taught you several glue recipes either… or about pitch. We’ll need to start there because the first of your lessons about polishing the finishing details includes pitch in the recipes.” Her Master said, looking thoughtful, and taking down some ingredients form the shelves to lay next to the burners.

“Now, there are two types of pitches. One is black pitch, which is made from tar, and the other is pine pitch, which is made from the sap of pine trees. Both I will require you to gather yourself. I’m very specific on what sort of pine pitch I like and I can show you the needles and bark of the pine I want you to gather it from.” He said, opening first one jar which contained the black oozing tar required for the black pitch – it looked low – and then another that was also looking low filled with pine sap. Scents of the forest hit her as she leaned closer to the pine sap.

“While I’m talking you can be polishing. The first use of pitch is for late stage polishing. Remember how I have you save all the dusts from our work? Especially onyx, beryl, emerald, jasper, chalcedony, and the other precious stones? They make great polishes. We waste nothing here, Kelski! We also use sandstone, grind it up and mix it with pitch and hand polish like so.” LI grabbed a large walnut sized bit of pine pitch, took down another jar and dipped the pitch into it.. ground sandstone by the look of it… and mixed the sandstone with the puddy-like pitch. Then he picked up one of the cabos Kelski still had on her dop stick in her hand and began rubbing the stone gently with the pitch/sandstone mixture. The results were immediate and faster and longer he rubbed, the higher polished the stone got. Two chimes in he handed the stick and pitch to Kelski, letting her begin the polish process.

The Kelvic kept polishing, rubbing her thumb and forefinger which was about the size of the stone over the stone while it was coated with pitch. The work was relaxing even if her mind did have more questions. It seemed on the outside like a simple part of jewelcrafting, this hand polishing. But it was not. Kelski could tell immediately that she'd have to get a 'feel' for what was working and what wasn't and where to polish or where not to over polish. The work was tedious, meticulous even, and she was soon glad Li had her polishing the gemstones one at a time while he taught her how to make the pitch. She could get experience for working, a lecture about what she was doing, and keep her hands busy. That made Master Li a fantastic teacher.

“Okay, I can get both types of pitch easily I think. I know where there are tar pits and lots and lots of trees.” The Kelvic said, sure her eagle form could carry a jar or two or even a small bag to fill with both substances. With her youth, she’d have a lot more fun and find it a lot easier to gather such things than her master would.

by **Kelski** on May 24th, 2015, 6:24 pm

Li nodded approvingly, keeping an eye on her hand polishing the gem while he continued with the lecture.

“So pitch is the basic ingredient in a lot of things. It’s made up of a mixture of black or pine pitch, tallow or beeswax and a little linseed oil. In this case we have tallow. Beeswax is rare and hard to come by here, but tallow from whales is easier to get. Linseed oil is purchased in the market. I don’t have time to press seeds for oil around here.” Li said, pointing out the ingredients. “Its three parts sap or tar to one part tallow and one part linseed oil. That becomes a vector for housing your substrate that you polish with.” Li said, demonstrating to Kelski how to first measure out the tar, oil, and tallow. Each were measured carefully on a scale after the Master zeroed it out. He then put the ingredient in a pot and lit up one of his small coal burners, stocking it with glowing coals from the jewelry forge.

When Master Li started making the pitch, she set her polishing efforts aside and moved to help him.

Kelski did the same, copying his movements, as she measured out pine sap, linseed oil, and tallow. The tallow reminded her of fat and that’s what Li had said it was, harvested from the blubber of harpooned whales. Lhavit wouldn’t function without the hunting and ever part was utilized.

Then, with both of them heating their own pots, letting the ingredients melt together as they stirred them. “So is this jewelcrafting?” She asked, curious that they were mixologists as well as gem cutters.

Li laughed. “Yes and no, this philtering, but we need to know a lot of philtering to do some of our finishing jewelcrafting techniques. The two go hand in hand, much like cooking and philtering do. When you polish your being a decent jeweler. In my day the two professions were separate. We had polishers we called finishers which left us to just gems to cut. But now we do it all. So we have a whole host os skills we need it to use as gem cutters and jewelcrafters since the lavish days of 'finishers' are over.” He added, noting that his mixture was well blended. He checked Kesli’s and nodded that it was done as well. Then he gestured for her to grab a pair of large bowls, and beckoned her over to the well. Li cranked the well handle and water gushed out into their cleanup sink, cold from the ground. Kelski held first one bowl under then the other, filling up the vessels with fresh cold water.

She took them back over to the bench and her master upended his hot mixture into the cold water. It began to solidify immediately. Kelski did the same with her mixture, and watched it rapidly cool.

When it was cool enough, Li grabbed the black pitch in his bare hands and began to work it into a gum. Kelski did the same thing, dipping her hands into the freezing water, scooping up the pine pitch, and began to work it over and over again into her hands until it resembled a bunch of clay almost dried but still pliable. “This won’t dry out. The oil keeps it moist.” LI said he added his new fist-sized batch to the container that had the rest of the black pitch in it. Kelski kept kneading hers a bit more, wanting it to be the same consistency. She poked Li’s with a spare finger to judge whether it was ready or not, and finally added hers to the pine pitch container.

“Now, Master… .what exactly do we do with pitch?” She asked, curious, but not wanting to have rushed him before that.

by **Kelski** on May 24th, 2015, 7:22 pm

Master Li looked thoughtful.

“We use it for polish media of course, but you know that already… “ Li said, gesturing at the walnut sized bit of pitch and sandstone Kelski had picked back up. She was carefully working on the hand finishing polish of the cabochon she’d cut earlier. There were about four dozen to polish, so as soon as she got the nod from her master, she’d trade out the one she was working on for a rougher stone, rubbing that one with the pitch and the sandstone gum. It really was putting a nice shiny polish on the cabos.

While Master Li was explaining things, Kelski was gently scraping the dops off the back of the smooth flat side of the gemstones and cleaning off the rest of the glue with a knife.

“While it can be used for finishes, paints, and even cooking sweets, for us it is valuable to use in a dopping mixture, for lapidary work. This is our fundamental glue. We take one part of pitch and mixed with two parts of powdered tile. Then we add that base to the boiled skin of an eel and we have our glue.” Master Li said as Kelski kept polishing her current cabo. She had the pitch and sandstone mixture half rapped around her thumb and she was rubbing the dome of the stone vigorously with it. She had to switch thumbs often and even moved to use her other fingers when the transition time wasn’t long enough.

And of course, Master Li had a jar full of dried eelskin. He took the bowls of water, dumped one into a pot, and put it over the fire to heat the water. Then he fished down his jar of dried eelskin, dumped one into the pot, and started boiling the skin just as soon as the water started boiling itself.

Kelski wrinkled her nose at the smell.

He had Kelski set aside her polishing and dig the now boiled skin, thoroughly rehydrated, back out of the water and into a giant mortar and pestle. Then he handed her the pestle and she began grinding the wet rubbery skin into a pulp. The pulp was incredibly sticky and stinky, but thick as well. LI added some power – dried okomo hoof he said – and then the whole bit had pitch added to it. Kelski kept grinding and grinding until the sweat broke out onto her brow. Then, almost a half a bell later, the gummy soupy mess went all liquid at once wherein Master LI crowed…

“See it dear? See? That’s it… you did that well and much faster than I could.” He then fished down a jar, they dumped the glue mixture into the jar, capped it tight, and then thoroughly cleaned out the mortar and pestle.

“That’s dopping glue. We also use the stuff for repoussé, which I will have you learn sometime soon. That’s where we do inverse hammered designs on metal such as for bracelets and torques. You use pitch two ways… first you can make a form that we take to the potter to fire and that becomes a hammering base to mold metal around. The second way we use it is to tint or highlight the metal in the grooves giving it a more heavily emphasized design. We can also use it in embossing and metal etching, but that’s something you’ll get into later.” Li promised, chuckling to himself. He looked forward to teaching Kelski those things. They were not his favorite to do.

Li made a dismissive gesture, sending Kelski off back to her table with a fresh dollup of sandstone and pitch. It was a long rest of the day for her polishing those cabos. It was far easier to cut them then finish them. And when she was done, LI had one more lesson for her.

When she was done with the fine fine sanding and polishing, Li brought her over a bottle that had liquid jewelers wax in it, a mixture of beeswax and linseed oil. He then showed her how to dip a finger intot he wax, rub it onto the stone, and then take a ball of cotton and work it to high shine. She then got to dab the glue they’d made for the dop onto the back of the stone, press it into the blank, and snap it in place. Once nested well, Kelski then re-polished the whole thing with wax until it shone.

She repeated the process for all four dozen, and then rose from her chair with them neatly laid out on a tray. “I did it, Master.. they are all done.” Master LI overlooked her work, nodded his approval, and released her for the evening.

by **Neologism** on June 21st, 2015, 6:11 am

Kelski:

Notes: You're very dedicated, which is always great! I can honestly say you lost me a few times, but I hope I got you the Lores you need. I look forward to seeing some of your plans for this character come to life! Don't forget to edit your post in the request thread as 'Graded' and PM me if you have any questions or concerns.

Solo [The Shining Diamond] Cutting Cabos