I Carved a new Quartz Daisy Flower for the Cane Handle

Broken Cane Handle

The 3 photos at the left show various photo angles of the Quartz cane handle.

You can see a gold ring at the end of the handle which joins the handle to the top of the cane stick.

Rough Quartz Material

I needed to find a flawless piece of Quartz for this carving project.

Quartz is a very common material but it can be very difficult to find a large piece which does not have flaws.

You can see a shiny area near my thumb which is a broken spot. This allows me to see into the crystal to some extent and it looks pretty clean. But there may be flaws which I cannot see.

Comparing the rough with the broken piece

Here I am holding the rough piece next to the broken piece in order to visually estimate if the rough piece will be large enough.

It is still too early to tell for sure.

The first flat spot

I have ground the first flat spot onto the large crystal. You can see a circle which I have drawn with a pencil on that flat spot.

After studying the shape of the crystal, I have determined that this is the best place for the 'base' of the carving to be located.

A new sharp diamond cutting lap

To work on a piece of raw Quarts which is this large, it would take forever if I used a dull cutting lap.

Here you see a new and sharp cutting lap which I purchsed for this project.

It won't be sharp anymore after more than an hour of grinding on this big Quartz crystal.

Grinding on the Quartz

Here you can see me hand-grinding the large Quartz to remove large amounts of excess bulk.

This is a tedious process which also makes one's arm tired with the amount of pressure which needs to be applied.

Measuring

Here I am measuring the piece to see how things are progressing.

On a project like this, I will measure many many times to make sure the final dimensions are correct.

Drawing lines for alignment

You can see that I have now drawn lines with a Sharpie along the sides for the purpose of determining the alignment of the carving.

Not aligned properly

My drawing shows me that I am currently not aligned properly.

I will need to adjust my flat spot on the bottom and re-draw my lines to bring the crystal into alignment to position the carving properly.

Re-aligned properly for the carving

You now see new lines drawn on the Quartz. I have re-aligned it so that the new carving will be properly positioned as I continue working on the piece.

I sawed the top off

I have cut the top off, which gives me the height for the carving, plus a bit.

I leave just enough height so that my carving will reduce the height by a bit and leave the final carving at the height of the broken sample or maybe a bit more.

Peering into the crystal

I have put some oil on the sawed surface to enable me to see into the piece.

I can now see that there is a large enough area inside the crystal to carve a flawless piece, after I cut off the outer sides to remove the flaws which do exist.

In this photo, on the right side you will see a couple of bright reflections which are cracks. They will be cut off later.

Sawing off the excess material

Here you can see where I have sawn off excess bulk.

More grinding

I am now back to the grinding wheel to remove more of the bulk material and bring the shape in closer to where it needs to be prior to working the piece by hand.

Flawless cone shaped preform

I now have a flawless cone-shaped preform.

It looks kind of cool with the light passing through it!

Preform next to sample

I can now see how my preform matches up to my sample shape.

I meausure to see that my size is on target taking into consideration a certain amount of material still needs to be removed.

Hand carving

Now starts the hand carving. I use a very coarse tool at this early stage for removing the bulk in the 'stem' area of the flower carving.

This step creates a BIG MESS in my shop. White Quartz mud flies all over the place.

The stem shaping is finished

You can now see the inside contouring in the stem area.

The challenge in this step was to use the necessary hand control to keep the stem area very cylindrical. It needs to look almost machine-made, which is how the sample looks.

Inset for gold collar

I next carved an inset step of the correct size for the gold collar to fit onto snugly.

I have also drilled a recessed area into the base which is where the piece will be fitted onto a post at the top of the walking stick.

Pre-polished stem section

I have sanded off the rough grinding texture and have also pre-polished the stem section on a special pad that I use to apply a very finely sanded pre-polished surface.

Plotting where to drill the
center recess for the diamonds

I need to accurately measure and plot exactly where to drill the center recess where the pave' diamonds will be mounted.

If this is off by even a little bit, it won't look right.

Recess area for Diamonds is finished

I have finished drilling the recessed area.

Diamonds in the recess

Here you can see how the Diamond dome sits in the recess area.

Laying out the flower pattern

I use a pencil to draw the basic flower pattern onto the top.

The flower pattern consists of 20 daisy shaped petals.

Rough shaping of the flower petals

Here I am roughly shaping out the daisy petals.

Each petal is a bit different. After making one petal, the next one needs to be lower and tilted to the right. Then the next one needs to be higher than the previous one and tilted to the left.

It is almost impossible to make an exact carbon-copy (or in this case a Quarz copy) of a non-geometric form, but I do the best I can.

Adding definition to the carving

Here I am starting to use more detailed tools to add more definition and shaping to the flower petals.

Adding more detail

When you enlarge this photo you will see that I have added long detail lines in the petals.

At this stage the flower has a nice frosted look, which I liked. But the jeweler wanted it polished, like the original.

The next steps remove the frosted surface. I use various hand tools which leave a finer and finer surface until I have what is considered by cutters to be a pre-polished surface.

FINISHED !

The flower now has a polish on the flower petals and also in the stem area.

The polishing step alone can take several hours.

The underside of the petals also had V shaped contours which needed to be sanded and polished.

Finished flower carving with Diamond
dome and gold collar in place

This photo and the next 2 show the finished carving with the Diamond dome and the gold collar in place.

I think the piece has a very elegant look.

A closer view

Just a closer look

Close-up of the flower carving
and Diamond dome

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