Lapidary Techniques

Lapidary techniques for Jewelry
Drilling into Stones
When drilling holes into stone you must have the right tools and equipment. The most important machine that I use is a mini drill press which has variable speeds and is more stable than drilling with a handset. For every hole that I drill I always drill a pilot hole with my smallest diamond drill bit, then the next size bigger until the desired drill bit is reached. This small pilot hole allows bigger diamond bits to effortlessly drill into the stone. One reason why a diamond drill bit doesn't cut is due to stone build up on the drill bit and lack of water. I clean my diamond drill bits with a white diamond cleaning block soaked in water all the time, this will surprisingly increase the life of your diamond bits. When drilling I get a feel for the stone and repeat an up and down motion while lubricating the stone with gem lube and/or water. It is rare that stones have imperfections after being inlayed. If this is the case, I will drill a hole into matrix in turquoise, pits in spiney oyster, or chips in other stones. This method that I use works well for multistone inlay, and makes the stones more attractive and clean. The only reason why I drill holes into stone is so that I can inlay a piece of silver or another stone into the drilled hole. I mostly use different gauges of silver wire depending on the size of the hole that is drilled.