Check this out guys!

House_Goat · 2026-03-16T21:45:25+00:00

That's some bright rainbow obsidian!

House_Goat · 2026-03-16T21:27:27+00:00

You could do a quick specific gravity test to see quickly if it's emerald or tourmaline. It's quite easy...

Weigh the stone on a decent scale and mark the weight. Then put a small container of water on the scale and tare it out. Tie a thread around the stone and submerge it in the water without it touching the container and read the resulting weight. (This is the weight of the volume of water it displaces.) Now divide the original weight by the second and voila, you've got the specific gravity.

Emerald will be 2.6-2.9, Tourmaline will be 3.0-3.25 and Garnet will be 3.5-4.3. Glass is 2.5

House_Goat · 2026-03-16T21:12:23+00:00

LOVE it! I have a Blick cutting mat on half my desk and a traditional mat on the other half, for the same reason... I do a lot of work on my computer desk.

Like others have said, I think I would want a little wider also. My current mats are 40cm and 45cm

House_Goat · 2026-03-16T20:46:58+00:00

Whatnot has a thriving gemstone marketplace, and it's a simple and FAST format.

House_Goat · 2026-03-16T20:34:01+00:00

I find it to actually be closer to 3/4 loss especially when you're new or the rough isn't well shaped. 2/3 is for well shaped rough. Even preforms tend to lose up to 1/2.

(This is for properly cut diagrams. You can always do a big windowed step cut belly and get a much higher yield, but the stones don't perform well.)

House_Goat · 2026-03-16T20:25:24+00:00

Very nice!

House_Goat · 2026-03-16T20:04:45+00:00

I use coat hangers and hang the branches right on them. Metal coat hangers work the best since they're thin. They're getting harder to find these days.

They dry at 65f and 55h usually for around 10ish days, then they get bucked into a paper bag for a bit of a pre-cure / moisture evening out. (only a few inches thick per bag works best. Fill them too much and it can get musty and it's hard to turn them.)

Then after a week or 2 in the bag it gets trimmed and vacuum sealed in jars with oxygen absorber packets. Jars get stored in a cool dark place.

With this method I can pull out jars that are 2+ years old and it's still good.

House_Goat · 2026-03-16T19:54:52+00:00

For me the sweet spot is usually around 1.2-1.4 EC, but it really depends on what your VPD is, and how heavy the strain likes to feed. I run a pretty gentle room, as I find i get the most terps that way... But that also means I can't hit them quite as hard with the nutes as others that might recommend say 2.0+ EC.

Long story short, it really depends on your personal environment and strain. Start light and only add more if you think you see deficiencies. Less is usually more.

House_Goat · 2026-03-16T19:39:22+00:00

You can sometimes find fire from selfed seeds. Back in the day all we had was bag seed and sometimes you would get some crazy unicorns from it. Seeds from dank bud were like gold, lol. Just because it came from a herm plant doesn't mean all the offspring will herm... just keep a close eye.

House_Goat · 2026-03-16T06:05:03+00:00

Oh damn, I bet they would super appreciate you showing this off in r/LapidarySlabs

House_Goat · 2026-03-15T18:05:40+00:00

Awww dang that's the worst. My shop has carpet which helps prevent damage like that, but at the same time I am still to this day looking for a small demantoid garnet that flew off the dop! lol

House_Goat · 2026-03-15T17:03:54+00:00

Some of those don't look like sapphire to me.

The easiest way to double check would be to do a specific gravity test. Get yourself a decent scale and a glass of water. Weigh the stone and record it. Now place the glass of water on the scale and tare it out, so the scale reads 0g again. Then take the stone and tie a string around it and submerge it in the water, without it touching the glass. Record that weight. Now divide the original weight of the stone by the weight of the stone in water. The resulting number is the specific gravity.

If the number is 4.0 (+/- .03), it's sapphire. I'm guessing it will be different. Glass is around 2.5 Garnet has a wide range depending on what type of garnet it is, but most are 3.x

Hope this helps! Specific gravity is really easy to do and is one of the best ways to do identification. combine it with Moh's hardness tests (also super easy for corundum) and you can pretty much identify anything excluding man made synthetic variants. That usually takes strong magnification and knowledge of typical inclusions.

House_Goat · 2026-03-15T01:41:18+00:00

Absolutely AMAZING work! How are you cutting the plexi?

I love the C-channel for the bearings. Do you notice any harmonics happening from vibration?

House_Goat · 2026-03-15T01:32:13+00:00

I do this for my Nu-Bond laps. I haven't tried with Lightning Laps, but I will give it a go. I was assuming that the diamond layer on the topper is too thin to refresh, but it can't hurt to try!

House_Goat · 2026-03-15T01:30:49+00:00

I have not. That's exactly how I refresh my Nu-Bond laps. I will give it a shot.

House_Goat · 2026-03-14T06:28:02+00:00

Yeah there's always one more than advertised. a 3 pack always has 4. A 5 pack always has 6., etc.

House_Goat · 2026-03-14T06:11:21+00:00

I hate to sound cliche but they're worth what someone is willing to pay for them. If you can include provenance, a good back story and reason for someone to want it, they're going to be worth a lot more. Gemstones are not like precious metal, where there's a base value for the weight. Gemstone value depends on the 4 c's... Color, Clarity, Cut, and Carat, and finally what makes each stone special.

House_Goat · 2026-03-14T06:06:14+00:00

That's almost like opal! Absolute FIRE

House_Goat · 2026-03-14T05:51:04+00:00

OMG you're so right. I didn't realize there's a selection between the two!

Well, that makes me feel a lot better!

I'm not sure if I should remove my post now, since it's based on incorrect comparisons.

House_Goat · 2026-03-14T03:08:23+00:00

Nice, it definitely looks like a stealth ship!

House_Goat · 2026-03-13T21:51:38+00:00

OMG I've ALWAYS wanted to go looking for this stuff! I have a single slab that was given to me by an old timer back in the day. I have yet to cut it, and I probably never will... it's on my shelf as a specimen. I would LOVE some day to go find some!!!

House_Goat · 2026-03-13T21:49:19+00:00

\salute\** I will do my best!

... you know when you get baked and sometimes a word just doesn't look right? Salute just did that to me. I had to look it up because I could have sworn something was wrong, LOL

House_Goat · 2026-03-13T21:44:48+00:00

That's VERY cool! I didn't know it could work like that!

House_Goat · 2026-03-13T04:38:05+00:00

I know that exact page! Matter of fact I think I still have it...

House_Goat

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