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

If you have any questions give me a call. I'm involved with the jewelry and lapidary classrooms at our local junior college. About a year and a half ago our club assisted financially and with equipment when they moved the jewelry and lapidary classrooms to a new  campus. Our club has financed the maintenance and repair of the equipment and bought most of the equipment for the classrooms for the last 35+ years. The move to the new classrooms involved considerable downsizing and consolidating of the equipment.
Bob

Milky chalcedony is one of the least appreciated lapidary materials out there. Because it lacks the color bands of agate it usually gets tossed onto the scrap pile thus making it very inexpensive for those who, like me, do appreciate the material. A few years ago I came across a book about Suzanne Belperron, a French jewelry artist from the 30's to the 50's, who made some fantastic jewelry from this material. Try Googling her and you will be amazed by her work. I'm planning on writing one of my monthly articles in Rock and Gem Magazine on making things from milky chalcedony.
Bob   

This new Piranha Agate is 2-1/2" tall.
Bob

I just finished the cab/carving on the right tonight. It is made from Milky Chalcedony and it is 2" tall.
Bob

Your show looks like it will be awesome but it is a bit of a distance from Central California. We had our show about a month ago an like yours we emphasize getting young people in the door. They really make a big difference in the atmosphere of the show.
I'm the California Federation of Mineralogical Societies Membership Chairman so I'm always going to our shows and promoting the show activities relating to membership. One thing that bothers me is the lack of focus on utilizing the largest pool of potential new members as a resource of getting new members. Clubs work very hard to get the attendance at their show up as much as possible but they drop the ball when it comes to fully investing their efforts in recruiting new members from that pool of attendees. We have a fully manned membership table located in the path of the normal flow of spectators, not at the admittance area because there is too much going on there that causes distractions from the membership table. My wife mans the table most of both show days. She has a large sign on the wall behind her that has a led lighted border, a disco ball on her table and an abalone dish with candy. As the kids are dragging their parents around they spot the disco ball and the candy dish so they drag their parents over to the table. She asks them to please don't touch the disco ball and also asks the kids a geology related question such as what is the state rock (serpentine for California and there is one sitting on the table) and gives them a piece of candy for the answer or for the effort to answer. All of this gives her an opportunity to engage in conversation with the parents and from that question she starts her sales pitch to see if they are interested in joining the club. All of this focus on membership and recruiting new members really is effective in extracting potential new members to the club from the show attendance. We have a rather large attendance so she gets to interact with a lot of people. This year resulted in 30 new member applications being filled out at the show. Most of the time each application results in two new members, husband and wife. I'm encouraging any club to adapt this procedure because it really works in increasing the membership rolls.
Bob Rush

Beautiful piece and definitely Hornitos Jasper.
Bob

It is very common with Copco material to be a flattened shape with a pattern on both sides though the patterns are not identical and they don't go all the way through.
Bob

Here is what the piece looks like that I made the cab from. It looks a bit blurry because the color pattern is about 1/8" below the surface.
Bob

That piece to me is certainly COPCO because of the orange skin, milky background and the pattern of the inclusions.
Bob

I haven't collected there and I also heard that collecting is not allowed. Over the years I have picked up the material from shows or collections that I have purchaded.
Bob

I just finished this COPCO Agate cab. It is 1-1/4" across. Making this cab will be in my monthly column in Rock and Gem Magazine in a couple months.
Bob

I have some very large slabs with the tan colors that I made a cab from. The slabs have no amethyst sage colors but they are definitely from the same location.
Bob

The fused quartz material is perfectly clear and flawless so its looks can be deceiving. Natural quartz is probably impossible to find in that size that is perfectly clear.
Bob

It's not glass. It is solid quartz but not crystalline quartz. It is made from a large ingot of fused quartz. This material is chemically identical to natural quartz and is made from the quartz components of sand. The material is made into a huge (8 feet across) cylindrical ingot that is sliced in 34" high segments that are sliced into quarters. These pie shaped pieces are used to make very large crucibles for melting pure silicon that gets drawn into boules up to 12" or more in diameter. These  boules are sliced into thin wafers upon which electronic circuits are developed for the electronics industry. This sphere was made by Richardson's Ranch about 20 years ago at a cost of about $7,000. Today it would cost about $50,000 to duplicate it.
Bob