The San Diego Mineral & Gem Society

Virtual Tour of our Classrooms

 

The silver fabrication room. Although students in the silver classes must have their own individual tools, the SDMG silver shop is equipped with larger pieces of equipment, such as torches, drill press, and a buffing station. Students in the silver classes work on a variety of projects, learning to make rings, pendants, bracelets and other articles of jewelry.
The casting room contains everything students need for casting projects, including lost wax casting and mold making.
The faceting room contains everything students need to cut faceted gemstones.
The main shop area contains all of the tools students need for making cabochons. The shop has two large slab saws (with 22" and 18" diamond blades respectively) for cutting slabs from rough material, and a trim saw that students use to cut the slabs into the rough outline of cabochon shapes.

After the student has cut the rough shape of the cabochon out of the slab, the stone is brought to the dopping station and attached to a wooden dowel using a special "dopping" wax.

When the stone has been attached to a dop stick, it can be ground to shape on the diamond grinding wheels (background) and then given its finished shape on the sanding wheels (right).

Finally, the stones are given a mirror finish (usually) at the polishing stations.

And here's a tray of beautiful stones cut by a student!

The Society Museum This is where we display a portion of the society's gem and mineral collection.

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