11/25/2025
One of my smarter ideas! Many awesome stones could not be used in intarsia work without first stabilizing. moonstone, apatite, pietersite, bumblebeejasper and many other stones are much too soft and full of hairline cracks. Coating them in starbond thin super glue allows the glue to seep into the cracks. It only goes so deep though. With extremely prone to falling apart stones like malachite i may use the super glue 4 times before the piece is finished. Glue, grind, glue, grind.... Dont worry though. In the end there is no glue coating your pendant. Just trace amounts on the inside helping the maintain the integrity of the stone.
I make multiple thing at a time. These essentialoil healing pendants im working on are comprised of strips of 4 different naturalstones. I started with cutting the strips of 30 pendants. 120 little strips of rock. Of those around 30 needed to be stabilized with super glue. The old way was to hold the strip. Put the glue on. Hold it for 30 seconds or so. Spray it with an accelerator so it dries. Then on to the next.
Now the geniusidea i wish Id thought of this years ago. These helpinghand magnetic clips, often used when fixing electronics. Clip it on the stone, set it on metal, led it hang over the ground for glue drips, and I can set up 10 at a time. By the time I set the tenth one. The first is done. Literally saving hours!
