Lapidary is the art of cutting, polishing and engraving precious stones, and in my case, it was limited to just the polishing part, and only with semi-precious stones. I’m not sure how my interest started, but I remember asking Mum for a stone polishing kit for Christmas in 1974. My mum’s cousin, Aunty Marie accompanied Mum and me to Bolton to look for something suitable, and I returned with a wonderful tumbling machine; I still have the box it came in, although I wore out the machine itself.
In essence, a stone tumbler comprises a small motor driving a set of rollers which rotate a barrel filled with water, some grinding paste (silicon carbide) and rough cut semi-precious stones. The stones are tumbled for about a week, after which the grinding solution is flushed out and replaced with a finer grade paste. The process is repeated three or four times until the stones are very smooth. The final high polish is achieved by tumbling for another week using a solution of zinc oxide or cerium oxide.
The stones I used had wonderful names including amethyst, carnelian, agate, malachite and my favourite, golden tiger eye. Any stones could be polished including beach pebbles, although they all have to be of a similar hardness. Mercer’s, a toy shop in Blackburn (now closed), sold the grit and stones, but when my toy tumbling machine went wrong, I replaced it with a more robust machine which I still have, along with many polished and half polished stones. Mum wouldn’t let me run the machine in the house because it was too noisy, so I had to set it going in the barn, where it probably just annoyed the dog.
I needed an outlet for all the polished stones I’d produced, so I bought materials to make simple jewellery. I would then sell these pieces to anyone who showed a vague interest, but I soon ran out of such friends, and I was fully aware that people only bought the stuff to be nice to me. I did sell some items at a hippy-type shop in Chorley, but there I lost money on every sale, so I gave up. I still have plenty of polished stones that I could have bought for probably a tenth of what it cost me to make. But that’s hobbies for you.
