Making a stylus from local garnet

[displacedsnail]

Good evening, fellow trolls,

The day I got my first lathe, I eyed a little baggie of almandine garnet I collected from a stream in my local park and wondered if I could make an embossing stylus with it. Three years later, I finally did! It's not much to look at, but the disc came out quite nice for what it is. Almandine is 7-7.5 on the mohs scale for hardness, so I think I'll further refine it and see how many discs I can emboss with it. I'll bet I can get a piece ground even smaller and sharper and get a much better sound next time--and I'll use a proper metal mount, not the drill part of a drill bit, haha. I didn't know if it'd work so I figured I'd start with a scrap piece.

What fun!

- Joe

[Semar]

Very interesting !
Did you made a video of the process ?

[farmersplow]

Respect! Great work! Experimentation is everything.

[displacedsnail]

Thanks you two! It's been a lot of fun, and the option to make styli out of something local has really opened my mind to what else could cut records, haha. Slag is easy enough to find, that's a decent mix of old metals, I wonder how well that could work? Probably too soft to work well for too long, but could be another fun experiment.

@Semar, I don't have video of this one--the process is nothing to write home about, and at one point I was just holding the stone in pliers and pressing it to the lapping disc, haha--but I'm attaching one I made about making 2 wedge styli out of old Gakken needles (and if you're on Instagram, I've been documenting my lathe fun here: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DUBcxRrDkk7/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==)

[spinnertownblanks]

We love the pliers video you posted yesterday, DIY!