Welcome to opalholicsanonymous.com where opal season lasts forever.

I found an estate lapidary equipment sale on ebay last week & jumped all over it.
First of all a Crown 8" cabber with motor. How often do you see a piece of 40 year old equipment that's this clean ? I just need to steam clean the inside of the pan & hood.









Then a Crown bead mill. Also 40 years old. It's missing a motor & drive wheel, but otherwise complete.





And a Rock Rascal Model T. It needs a good cleaning, but the bearings are smooth and the saw blade has lots of life left in it. Even came with the saw vise & a spare new blade.



There were many other pieces which I'll post pics of as I have time.

Sweet scores! I have one of those bead mills... Havnt used it, but also from an estate sale.

Couple more things. First a Loretone 8" hood & pan.



Next is an Idunno. My guess is it was an early form of doing simple faceting on the end plate of a horizontal cabbing machine. It was an index wheel with 32 equally spaced holes. There is a peg in the mast for one of the holes to fit over. And the other end takes an aluminum dop stick.

Wow, you weren't kidding when you said that equipment was in great shape! You scored a huge win that time!!

Another piece from the lot. This time a bead drilling vise. I took several pics to show details. This vise comes with its own water tank. The vise slips over 2 brass pins.



The vise apart to show large & small countersunk holes for different sized beads.




The vise assembled.

Man, that looks brand spanking new! I would have to see it used though. I have no idea how it works.

Nice score. I just got a notice about a book I forgot I started bidding on. Too busy lately.

You have some good stuff there my friend!
If I only had the room for all those goodies!
I could use a few of those pieces you've got there for sure, but then again, you can never have enough equipment!

Room ? Who has room ? I'm trying to talk my wife into a nice big storage shed that I can convert into a shop / storage area.

Too cold to unpack things outside, so i grabbed a bunch of bags of small stuff to bring inside.

I'll be polishing with diamond for a while.


New diamond drills, and a few carving bits.


The previous owner must have been into artificial enhancement of stones. Amethyst & green rock die.


And finally a set of vintage gold carat test points Little gold points from 4 to 20 carat brazed to brass pieces.