How I Got Started in Lapidary

Like a lot of kids, I had a rock collection.

I also collected stamps.

Yes, I was that kid.

But rocks never really became anything more than an occasional interest until much later in life.

At one point as an adult, I spent about a year in North Carolina while my family remained back in California. I had time on my hands, so I signed up for a weekly class that included cabochon cutting and even some faceting.

It was only about two hours a week, which made it hard to get very far very quickly, but I enjoyed it. I learned enough to understand that there was a lot more to cutting and polishing stones than I had ever realized.

Then life moved on.

Years later, retirement from a career in software development was no longer some vague thing in the distant future. I started thinking seriously about what I was actually going to do with my time.

I knew I needed a hobby.

Apparently, the answer was rocks.

Now back in California, I joined a local gem and mineral club and started getting back into lapidary work. Around the same time, I had another strong influence: the women in my family love turquoise.

That eventually led me to a fee-digging site in Nevada where you could actually hunt for turquoise.

So I went.

And I came home with a bucket of it. 

There was only one small problem.

I really had no idea what I was doing.

I had found turquoise, but finding rock and knowing what to do with it are two completely different things.

I learned to cut turquoise on Genie cabbing machines at my gem club and to use their water-only trim saw. Somewhere along the way, I found an old 6-inch flat lap at a garage sale. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked. I bought new diamond laps for it and figured I was ready for the big time.

And, actually, I pretty much was.

The big turning point was figuring out how to stabilize the softer turquoise so I could work with material that otherwise would have been too soft or crumbly. I also learned about backing turquoise cabochons when extra support was useful, including using JB Weld.
Once I had those pieces in place, I started cutting a lot of Montezuma Mine turquoise.

Most of those early cabs were high domes. In hindsight, some were probably a little too high-domed. But I was making cabochons consistently, learning what worked, and getting better with every batch.

In 2025, I bought my own 6-inch trim saw from Highland Park Lapidary. Not long after that came a 6-inch cabbing machine. Since I don’t have a garage, I created a small workshop in a shed.

I also started joining Highland Park Lapidary’s live events, which opened up an even bigger world of lapidary learning - materials, techniques, equipment, and people.

What started as a childhood rock collection had turned into cutting cabochons, collecting rough, learning about turquoise, experimenting with stabilization, buying equipment, joining a rock club, attending shows, and eventually selling some of what I make.

And somewhere along the way, I finally understood what “lapidary” really meant.

It is geology, craftsmanship, problem-solving, collecting, equipment, experimentation, history, and a very large community of people who can spend an unreasonable amount of time discussing a particularly interesting piece of stone.

Which, as it turns out, suits me just fine.

And along the way I personally adopted Highland Park Lapidary’s Golden Rule:
“Life’s Too Short To Cut Ugly Rocks!”