Chatoyant Feather Malachite Gemstone Cabochons For Custom Bezel Type Jewelry Designing
Some time ago I received my first piece of Chatoyant Feather Malachite. I had seen pictures of finished cabochons of it before and was very excited to finally get to cab some.
Initially I was very disappointed because for the life of me, I could not get a polished finish.
With this chatoyant type Malachite, you have to slice the piece of rough a certain direction to fully take advantage of the chatoyant effect. Even more so with a Feather type chatoyant Malachite because if sliced improperly, the majority of feathering can be lost.
After much discussion on our forum, this ended up sitting on the bench for about four months. Part of the problem was the amount of copper within this. Finally, I sent some off to one of our forum members (Seth) who posted his success with completing a beautiful cab from what I sent him. My interest was sparked again and dove in to give it a try once more!
I thought might share the process from beginning to end just for fun. Visitors have commented how they enjoy seeing the process from the original piece of rough right up through the finished cabochon. I enjoy showing it too!
This first image is the rough as I received it. Before I even cut into it I was sure this was going to be something special.
As I mentioned earlier, there is a way to cut this so as to get the best feathering effect within the finished cabochon. Because of that I had to make a mold. Poured plaster of paris in it and then positioned the Malachite rough on it’s side so that once the plaster dried I could then cut this in the direction I wanted too. Otherwise there would have been no way to either hold it by hand or even begin to think about clamping this fragile mineral down in the slab saw.
The dark areas are copper. It was not long before that became a real problem for me in regards to polishing. As I shared on forum, for the life of me, I could not get a polish. the copper continued to smear as I tried to polish with tin oxide polish on a leather type polishing pad.
Here are a couple of pictures of my first attempt prior to sending some off to Seth from the forum.
Ok, so on to my recent successes !
First off, the oxide polishes were not the way to go. Seth mentioned his success came from the use of diamond abrasives. I believe he used some diamond paste as well. Since I was not set up with diamond, I have since made a few special wheels with a very soft leather that I can now use diamond pastes on. They are a small 4″ diameter, and simply placed them on a spare polishing unit.
Then…… the real success for me came when I set up a unit with a cotton buffing wheel. Mirkaba (Bob) from the forum had mentioned that he had some great successes with Zam.
Zam gemstone polish is used to polish soft materials, such as sapphire and gold (the softest of all metals).
This is when the shine really started to pop. Since this success with using Zam, I have began working again with this and other types of Malachite.
Here are a few pics showing my cabbing and polishing successes of this absolutely beautiful Chatoyant Feather type Malachite.
These, like most all my cabochons are bezel setting ready. These pictures were taken prior to adding the beveling for a bezel setting of which I have since added.
If you would like to see more details on these particular gemstones, you can check them out by going to this link.
As always your welcome to contact me about pricing details for special cut and shaped gemstone requests.
Thanks for stopping by my blog and reading about this Malachite.
