A Rose for Rose

Some while ago a trader left me with a bag of small spheres of various breeds of stones and pretty minerals. Lapis, agate, something green, something stripey, something glowing like marbled lava (a salamander is trapped inside, he said), a sphere that I'm pretty sure is an actual bubble, yadda yadda -- those kind of things that you buy just to have them for Someday Later. Turns out Someday Later was this past Tuesday because I found them all again in a box. In a square box inside a larger box. The point is, one of them was a small, rose quartz sphere. I had been looking for a piece of rose quartz for the base of Rose, the wand of Tulipwood.


I measured the sphere against Rose's base. It was just the right size, with even a little wiggle room. The base of the wand is 1/2-inch and the quartz is a 3/8-inch sphere, leaving 1/8-inch to work with, which I translated into a 1/16-inch border around the sphere once it was in place.

If I had a cabochan, I'd use a small, flat-headed bit to trim the setting. For a sphere, I used spherical bits to hollow out a deep, cave-like shape to hold the quartz. I have two spherical bits, one large and one small. Both bits are designed for stone so their surfaces are much smoother than the sanding bands. Compared to sandpaper, they are would 220 grit or higher.

Spinning at a high speed, the larger, 13-mm spherical bit heats the wood a bit as it grinds a shallow disc into the base.

Unfortunately, the spherical bit is wider than the rose quartz, so I can't go any deeper into the wood without grinding over the edge of the base, which I don't want to do. I definitely want as much border as possible. The only other spherical bit I have is a 5mm grinder, and it's even more smoother-er. 


I considered using a conical or even a thin, tubed-shaped bit to first carve deeper into the wood and then use the 5mm sphere to finish out the shaping inside, but there was no promise that I'd be able to get the setting rounded enough to be snug around the rose quartz. I decided to use only the small sphere to grind out the remaining shape. A round bit to create a round shape. Made sense to me.

The shallow disc made by the larger bit did't come near the 1/16 border so I pencil in the border around the edge. I slow the Dremel to half speed and start in the center of the hollow, working the bit in small circles until I'm comfortable with its ability to sand the tulipwood. Digging in with the small sphere, the wood actually comes away easier than with the larger bit.

Going even more slow, I trim around the inside of the penciled border. Once I had that done, I concentrated on shaping from the center of the base and outward, cranking the Dremel back up to a higher speed. The cloud of pink sawdust was shadowed by the white smoke of charred wood. I kept my head down. Grind grind grind.

I checked the shape and sizing constantly. My tendency was to circle deeper into the shape instead of maintaining the wider girth of the sphere.  Here's the rose quartz sitting in the hole that's still too small:

I swirled the spinning sphere around the middle, and the quartz kept sitting deeper and deeper in the setting, and then suddenly, the quartz was snug in the shape.

The rose quartz fits so well in the base I didn't have the heart to take it out again.

There is a bit more finishing work to be done on the hilt, and then Rose will be done.

I've messed up the photo positioning, and maybe a couple of the paragraphs. HUGE SIGH. The couch is calling.