Lapidary / Gemstone Community Forum

I'm setting up a new "lapidary corner" in a classroom. But I'm a newbie to this field myself, so I could use your help.

What would be the least noisy and messy saw options, both slabbing and trim? I prefer stand-alone units, not combos, and new, not used.

Power feed would be nice for the slab saw. The "gemworld.com" site says the Loretone 12" professional slabbing saw "runs cleanly enough to operate in the kitchen". Even though we will NOT be running it in the kitchen, that sounds attractive...if it is true.

I realize that this is going to be an inherently noisy activity, but I gather from some of the posts that the construction of the saw can deaden or amplify the sound somewhat.

Most slab saws run somewhat noisy. Our classroom at a junior college has a 24", A 20" and an 18" saw in the same smaller room as the grinders, sanders and polishers. We have converted them all to using mineral oil for safety and health considerations especially in the same room as the other equipment. In my experience all saws to a degree leak oil. I have an older Lortone 12" and a newer Lortone 14" as well as a very old Highland Park 18" saw. The 12" leaks the most and the 18" leaks the least.
Our trim saws all run water as a coolant/lubricant which from an equipment standpoint is somewhat far from ideal but from a safety and cleanup standpoint it is better. We have 12 trim saws, 6" through 10" and when they are all running it is quite noisy. Fortunately they are in another (crowded) room along with a 12" Lortone and a 14" Lortone saws. We went to the local hardware and got 1" thick 4' X 8" sheets of insulating panels to absorb much of the noise.
Bob

No such thing as a least noisy or messy when it comes to cutting rocks. It's gonna be messy and dirty and noisy, no way around that.