so i recently cut a bunch of agates from australia on my lapidary saw and they were
all truly beautiful but of all those cut agates there's one of them i can't stop thinking about
this guy right here it's a blue nodule and when we cut it open each side had two different colors to
the cut faces and the reason why i can't stop thinking about is because i was wondering how
in the world is it possible that we got this kind of tannish yellow and this grayish blue
on both sides did we cut it so perfectly that we just missed the color both ways well i posted a
video on instagram about cutting this and i was talking to somebody on there and he let
me know that likely because this is a from agate creek they're common to have water level banding
so the theory is is that we cut into the straight water level banding and just got water level like
the top layering of the water level banding so in this video we're going to be polishing this half
right here and we're going to test the theory with this half right here i know it's a little
itty bitty shard got a little crack right here a piece broke off there's not much we can do with it
but we are gonna take it and we're gonna cut it right down the middle and get a micro look at
some possible details that are going on and maybe get water level bands in this we'll just have to
see so after some polishing we're going to come over to the saw and cut that open but let's get
started with polishing this piece right here we're going to be grinding down the edges right here
smoothing it out with a nice finish rounded face polish and after a few stages we'll head over to
the saw and cut that piece open but i'll get the water going and the wheels turning on my cab king
so we didn't work that too long probably about two minutes on the 220 grit wheel it doesn't
look like it has that much of a rounded face but we're going to keep bringing it down here we move
on to the 280 grit resin wheel so i'm going to get the water going with that and we'll work out
the scratches for this stage prior and uh after this stage right here we'll go cut that other half
i'm just going to check our stone here see if we're ready to move on and it's looking pretty
good but you can see right in the middle there's just a smidge of a flat spot so it's a little
harder to get to and i have some probably a combo of saw marks and 220 grit wheel scuffs so we're
gonna work that center out a little bit i'll probably hit it with a little bit of permanent
marker just so i know i'm getting it off there so i'll do that now nothing too crazy just so i
know i'm working that area it's being a bit of a stinker so i'll work that a little bit more here
we got that scuff mark out of the middle of that beautiful eggot and i'm gonna now
that's not what you think all right so i'm going to cut this one in half right
here and we're going to test that theory to see if there are water level bands
inside this so i'll fill up my little saw we'll turn it on and we'll get to cutting
all right let's check this little baby out so we know what this side looks like already inside
it just has the same kind of cloudiness on the inside so
i am happy i didn't cut it the other way would have been the same thing on this side as this side
so i'm assuming with the other piece that we're polishing right now that same same for cutting
i'm not going to cut that one so we'll never know but kind of a cool theory to test out so it was
not water level banding and we didn't catch it in that way very interesting though that we got blue
and kind of that tannish creamy looking stuff on the other side but let's get back to polishing
so we're now moving on to the 600 grit resin wheel and i'm really really loving how this is turning
out i love this window and you can see this white spot right here we uh we we ground it down a
little bit i didn't want to lose it completely but we did grind it almost away i pulled off
on it a little bit and hopefully it sticks around to the end of the polish but we'll get going here
so one of the super fun things as you go from wheel to wheel stays to stage
is as you're working it you're trying to hit every little surface on this entire
face because you don't want to come over and oh i miss this little pocket here because i was focused
too much over here it's and that's why i come over and i check it in the light dried off and check
it for scratches constantly it's not something i show all the time but i'm checking it constantly
each stage just to make sure it's ready to move on
well i think this is looking pretty good and we're going to move on to the next one which
is the white 1200 grit so get the water going on this one hit my little foot pedal to get it going
start getting a little closer to that mirrored finish we want
so we made it through the 1200 grit wheel and we're going to move on to the 3000 grit
but i wanted to say that our little white poof i believe has made it through because the 3000 grit
is that final polished stage it's not going to take a ton of skin off so i think we're
good it's now just a little poof of a cloud up there and it's turned out really well
and we're going to move on to the next stage should only take a few more minutes
so we finished polishing our piece on the 3000 grit wheel and while our cab king finishes
spinning here i'm going to let you in on a really big shop secret it's really behind the scenes so i
get asked all the time how i keep my unit so clean and that's the big secret is after i'm done i just
give it one of these little numbers obviously i do more when the wheel stops spinning
but i just do a little little bit of this a little bit of that
and we're good and that's really all the time i take i don't do a whole lot more than that it was
probably 15 20 seconds of wipe down but here is our polished piece you can see my face hi
really really cool it's a very unique piece it's got some really cool details down in there
got a little white poof up there i really love this it's really really cool just very very
unique i love the unique stuff uh as with all agates i think everywhere they're all
individually unique you know no two are the same and that goes even true with wherever i put them
the halves of the half you know this isn't even the same as this half that's pretty crazy
but i really enjoyed polishing this and i hope you enjoyed it too if you did leave a thumbs up
and if you want to see the full cutting video of cutting all these i'll put that
in the description box so thanks for watching bye