OpalSupreme wrote:hehe I know Foredom didn't know fordham LOL
That's right, OS, it's Foredom for the machine. Fordham is a Jesuit university in New York.
https://www.fordham.edu/
I was encouraged to cut my first opal when a member on our old forum, Mike Kelley, ran a contest and told me I should participate, saying I could do it with nail files and sandpaper. I started with the files, and not owning a Dremel, I used a battery operated nail salon tool's sanding and buffing attachments and cut the very thin rough into a slightly arched heart shape that I polished with cerium oxide on leather and the salon tool, that didn't come out too bad at all for a first attempt. After I got a Dremel and a lap, I thought about making it look better, but after further consideration I decided to leave it as is to show what can be done with simple hand tools. It may have taken a lot more time to cut than they take to do now, and it definitely doesn't look like a professionally cut stone, but it did the job; it got me hooked.