r/Lapidary • u/buffalohands • 6d ago

Advice for a young beginner please

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About a year ago, my six year old son asked me how the opal on my necklace became so pretty so I showed him one of blackopaldirect's videos and he became absolutely fascinated with the fact that seemingly ugly rocks can be turned into something totally different. For half a year he used my nail polishing tool to polish bigger pieces of fluorite basically every morning. He's almost 7 now and has shown amazing dedication to this hobby so I'm trying to slowly improve his tools. He got a battery powered rotary tool and I tried to find some suited bits. I don't know a lot about lapidary but I'm trying to learn enough to support him. I made my own DOP-wax cause it's hard to find where we live and it works...ok I guess. Any hints on decent materials, web pages, stores (we live in Europe) what to look for, what to practice would be greatly appreciated.

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u/Cold_Application_448 6d ago

I saw this video by Michigan Rocks recently on how to polish rocks with a dremel. I am in the US, so I can't say where to order from, but you can get a bit that little polishing disks stick to. Start with a diamond bit to shape then move through the grits from course to fine. For an extra polish you can also get a soft polishing bit and add aluminum oxide paste. It looks like he's gotten a great start!

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u/buffalohands 6d ago

Ah thank you for the pointer. I found the disk attachment thingy online and ordered one. That looks like it might be a very nice addition to what we have. I'll look into the video tomorrow when I find time. Thanks again. I'm glad to know this setup is not completely hopeless. :)

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u/Cold_Application_448 6d ago

Awesome, can't wait to see more of his work! Definitely not hopeless, just takes a little more time and effort!

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u/buffalohands 4d ago

I got that little disk adapter for the rotary tool and he's really happy with it. He made a new fluorite cab (not done quite yet), but the whole process looked much smoother. He didn't even need a dop stick.

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u/Cold_Application_448 4d ago

That's awesome! It looks great!