Hello out there fellow jewelry community!
If anyone has experience in enlarging of very hard round beads, possibly initially drilling to as I live huge 18-20 mm beads and they’re hard to find. I’d be grateful for your experience/expertise/advice…
I’m interested in mostly enlarging holes in precious beads. Particularly, gem silica (yikes-can’t afford to make mistakes with those!!!) Jadeite and chrysoprase, my three favorites… I have a dremel and have been practicing on some fake (possibly reconstituted) pink Opal I also have poor quality lapis and poor quality amethyst I can practice on. The diamond heads go right through the Opal…well not exactly right through. But nada on the chrysoprase…luckily I have 7/8 bad beads from an expensive strand to practice on. Because these are my favorite stones in addition to all Australian, Brazilian basically any non hydrophane opals.
I’m considering investing in a real machine that I can also use to polish gold and silver and do cabbing (my 13 yr old son loves watching cabbing Opal videos with me… from rough to gorgeous…we have found a shared interest! I want to encourage) is there a good quality cabbing/drilling machine out there. There’s lots of “cheap “Pearl” drilling set ups but pearls are soft. And I’m leery of a lot of the sellers…it seems to be the same exact couple of drills for anywhere from $450-900…or more.
Right now all my beads are drilled it’s just the holes are too small. I’d rather invest in something that will last and not need replacing every couple of years…but I don’t have $7-$10k to spend either. Any tips and all advice or words or wisdom are greatly appreciated! Truly. I find the generosity and sharing of wisdom from king time pros on this site to be completely uplifting in these days of doom and gloom. Thanks again everyone 
Paddy Peters (former RN…soon to be vintage jeweler? Maybe eventually real jeweler…,)