TOOLS, SUPPLIES, SERVICES & LEARNING

Al's Opals Imports  Gold, Silver and Lapidary services and supplies (new and gently used).

Hours: Monday Friday 8:30am to 3:30pm; Saturday 9:00am to 1:00pm

3684 Fairmount Ave., San Diego, CA 92115  619-282-1700

Attard's Minerals  Analytical Services.

Website:  attminerals.com

Bob's Rock Shop  A gigantic site with links to several hundred other sites.

Website:  www.rockhounds.com/rockshop/table.shtml

Cabtopia  Lapidary, jewelry, metal clay templates, with 12 templates currently available and 6 more template designs in production; discount for bulk orders of all 12 templates.

Website:  www.cabtopia.etsy.com

Crystalite  Manufacturer of diamond grinding wheels, disks, saw blades, carving points, etc.

Website:  www.abrasive-tech.com/crystalite.aspx

Diamond Pacific Tool Corp.  Manufacturer of larger tools and equipment, including grinders, sanders, slab saws, tumblers, etc.  Also many items that are extremely useful to rock carvers.  SDMG has several of their "Titan" diamond grinders in the main shop.

Website:  www.diamondpacific.com

Fire Mountain Gems  A large mail-order supply for beads, and some gems and findings.

Website:  www.firemountaingems.com

Online Forestry Degrees  is a blog site for everything related to forestry and nature conservation, including articles on schools, state parks, degree information and career choices.

Website:  onlineforestrydegree.org

Harbor Freight  What?  Harbor Freight for jewelers and lapidary artisans?  You better believe it.  Harbor Freight is *the* source for low priced (and often low quality) tools. Not every tool in the shop has to be heirloom quality. Harbor Freight sells cheap sintered diamond blades, grinders, tile saws tools.  It is amazing how useful (and how cheap) the tools you can find in their stores or catalogs.

Website:  www.harborfreight.com

Hi-Tech Diamond  Diamond Abrasive equipment; manufacturer of grinding disks, diamond sanding disks, carving points, polishing materials and miscellaneous bench tools.

Website:  www.hitechdiamond.com

Hi-Tech Precious Metals & Refinery  Buys scrap and pays top dollar; provides an array of services, including stone removal (diamond recovery), assay, diamond trading and more; a catchy promo video can be viewed on the home page showing melting gold and showing other refining equipment.

Website:  wwww.hitechpmr.com

Jantz Supply  High quality metal working tools, including a very nice supply of knife blanks.

Website:  www.knifemaking.com

Lee Valley & veritas  Possibly the best woodworking tool company in the world in terms of their high quality, very reasonable prices and integrity.  Not only will artisans in many fields find useful tools in their catalogs, but also their catalogs are genuinely fun to look through and will often inspire your own projects.

Website:  www.leevalley.com

Lortone  Manufacturer of slab saws, trim saws, tumblers, etc.

Website:  www.lortone.com

Micro-Mark  The small tool specialists.  A fascinating company.  They sell miniaturized versions of wood and metal shop tools for model makers.  Many of their tools are very useful to jewelers, carvers, etc.

Website:  www.micromark.com

Miner's Gallery  Need slabs?

Website:  minersgallery.com/category/slabs-for-cabbing/

Rio Grande  One of the largest jewelry supply stores in the US, if not the largest.  Competitive prices, best customer service in the industry, enormous inventory.  Reading Rio Grande's catalogs is an education in itself.

Website:  www.riogrande.com

Rockler  Woodworking and hardware.  Expensive, but well-stocked vendor of woodworking tools and related items that can also be handy for artisans in other fields.  Well worth checking out.

Website:  www.rockler.com

Rock Tumbler  Rock tumbling library.  Billed as the internet's largest library of rock tumbling articles.

Website:  rocktumbler.com/questions.shtml

Sunwest Silver  A small company that specializes in silver charms. Very good selection.

Website:  www.sunwestsilver.com

Santa Fe Jewelers Supply  offers personalized service and quality equipment and accessories specifically geared toward cutting, shaping and polishing of your precious finds.  Offers great pricing to customers, due to long-term relationships with Diamond Pacific, Covington, Raytech, Lortone, Lapcraft and others.  Santa Fe Jeweler Supply also offers tumblers, bench grinders, flexshafts, bits and burrs, etc and so on.  In business for over 26 years, Santa Fe Jeweler Supply serves educators, government, jewelers and rockhounds alike!

Website:  www.sfjssantafe.com

Tripp's Manufacturing  Similar to Rio Grande.  They have a smaller inventory, but some very interesting findings for jewelers.

Website:  www.tripps.com