Marble

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I wouldn't try it but I am chicken that way. If you decide to do it...you need atotally different set of tools. From drill bits to turning tools. I thin there were talks about it before...you definitely need atleast carbide tools...better yet ceramic or diamond tipped.

Also note that it might break/chip easily if dropped.
 
Keep it as a curiousity and make a pen out of Blanco Nero Tru Stone. To cut stone, you need LOTS of water to keep the material and the tools cool and lubricated. Black Lung Disease is not limited to coal miners, anyone who inhales enough rock dust can get it.
 
You could always use it as a base for a desk pen set. It's nice and heavy, which makes it a good choice for such a purpose.
 
I wouldn't attempt to turn it with chisels, but here's a thought. Maybe you could put it on the lathe, then use a stone grinder wheel on a hand drill to shape it. Then switch to a dremmel for detailed shaping. Might be hard on the lathe bearings though.
 
Chris,
I've seen similar questions here a few times, but I haven't had time to reply to them before.

I've seen an article in I believe Rock and Gem magazine about how to go about this. Disclaimer: I have not had time to try it!

The author used a slimline kit. Since drilling holes that long in rock is challenging, he came up with another idea. He cut his rock into thin slabs (with a wet diamond saw) and glued them basically in a square (use the 24 hr. epoxy) around the tubes. Where the edges butted, they were lapped flat, but not polished, so that the epoxy has something to grab. After giving them several days to set up and develop all the strength in the epoxy bond, he found a steel rod that would pass through the brass tube from the kit. Then he used a lapidary grinder (wet) to knock off the corners. Once it was sort of octagonal in cross section, he started to let the blank spin on the steel rod as he pressed it to the grinding wheel. Apparently he was able to get the blank pretty round this way, and taper it to match the fittings. It was sanded and polished in a similar way. I believe I recall him saying that he held the blank at an angle to the wheel, i.e. maybe at a 30 deg. angle to horizontal, to reduce the tendency for the blank to just spin really fast. I think he was also using finger pressure to slow the rotation of the blank.

Note that all the grinding and sawing was wet. Done wet, dust is not a problem. Even after it drys, it turns into cement, so there's still no dust.

By the way, if anyone gets into grinding rock, don't dump the used water down the drain. The rock dust will also settle out in your pipes and solidify there.

Mike
 
Lol, I have an unlimited supply of most any kind of marble & granite out there: my cabinet shop is next door to a marble countertop maker and he tosses out stuff the size of pizza pans every day.

Hadn't thought of it as a desk pen base. hmmmm.....
 
Originally posted by cd18524
<br />Can you turn it? My brother is bringing me a big box of scrap (good pen size he tells me).
Click to expand...

I don't know. So why bother posting, you ask?

Well, it is the old Geology 101 course climbing out of the fog after all of the years. A German mineralogist by the name of Mohs created a scale of relative hardnesses of rocks and minerals back in 1812 and it is still in use today. By hardness, he meant resistance to scratching. According to his scale marble has a hardness of 3-4 and hardened steel starts at around 6-1/2 and goes up so steel is a good bit harder than marble.

In theory, this means you should be able to shape marble with hardened steel tools. Might be fun to try it to see what happens. Think I might use a $8 HF skew rather than a $100 Sorby; but who knows.....it might just work???[;)]
 
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