Te Hei Matau:

John: thats a really beautiful piece of jade, I like the
design, did you carve and polish it I assume? I like the chain
design as well....coool. Dave

G’day: thanks Dave. Yes, the matau was cut from a 5 pound slab
I bought when I visited Hokitika, down the West Coast of the
South Island of NZ. I sliced, carved and polished the thing,
using a leather lap with tin oxide at about 800rpm - gives a
brilliant poliish. I only use diamond for polishing when I have
to get into narrow places. And I paid through the nose for that
slab: the blighters know exactly how much they can get off the
visitors - it’s a real tourist trap down there these days. The
jade comes from Olderog Creek, a tributary of the Arahura River
and the jade boulders - some weighing several tons - are cut on
the spot with large petrol-driven diamond saws flown in by
helicopter, and the jade goes out the same way, for the jade area
is a three day’s hard tramp over extremely rugged country. The
jade is very hard; to cut a slice from a 3x4 chunk takes about
25-30 minutes with my water-cooled diamond saw. So there it is,
Dave, and thanks again for taking the trouble to write. Cheers,

    /\
   / /    John Burgess, 
  / /
 / //\    @John_Burgess2
/ / \ \

/ ()
(
______)

One of my mentors had a jade boulder near hid garage, with a
sledge hammer next to it. If you could split it you could own
it. Jade is so tough and fiberous that he probably still has
that unsplit boulder…

Rick Hamilton
Richard D. Hamilton

Fabricated 14k, 18k, and platinum Jewelry
wax carving, modelmaking, jewelry photography

http://www.rick-hamilton.com
@rick_hamilton