Help with cabbing a heart or cross

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May 22, 2014
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Hi guys, figured I'd ask about a problem I had a while back. I was going through the cabbing template shape sheet at the local lap club and noticed the heart. I roughly cut the shape from a flat stone using a diamond table saw and began cabbing the edge.

Straight away I realised I could not shape or get into the corner at the top of the heart, the cabking machine only has a 6mm space between each disc and found great difficulties shaping and polishing not being able to fit the stone on the edge of each disc. Ended up using a couple of diamond files to clean up what i couldn't do on the cabking.

I came across the same issue while attempting a cross shape but I was able to squeeze the shape in just, dropping it several times..

Can someone help me with some info here? I've googled and YouTube's with little answers, cheers!

I should probably mention I'm teaching myself slowly, members that are left at my lap club that know how to use the machines
 
Hi AtomRat,

I've never had the problem because any setup I've used had enough space around the wheels to use the wheel edges. Last time I did a heart was years ago, but I remember being unhappy with the polish in the corner, and using wet'n'dry paper and a skewer to go over it again with the finer grades, I think 400, 800, 2000 or something like that. After spending some time on it like that the polish looked much better.

I think the problem was that the edges of the belts I was using are much less worn...

Cheers
 
Hey man I started to cab a pretty big heart yesterday out of rhodonite.

The grinders I use are only one wheel aside so I was able to get in there on he angle.

I couldn't make it deep enough though and it is double sided so didn't really matter to much but one the experience fellows said he gets in there with small diamond files and makes the top down part of the heart to make it really bounce out.

In the picture he goes as low as the tweezers with the file in the centre.

1436050040_image.jpg
 
Thanks heaps both of you for your replies. It seems I was still on the right track of having to finish them by hand. Ill upload some photos of the couple ive managed to shape. The angle on the center of the heart template im using is very sharp, more like 50 , I should mention its no bigger than 14mm x 14mm.

I still wish there was a faster way to process a few in a day, rather than one in a day. Could probably custom shape dremell tools?
 
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