Lapidary and Jewelry are very symbiotic in nature. It makes little sense to me to separate the two with space to accommodate them as is.
They sell together extremely well in tours as well. And fit the scope of glass, jewelry and ceramics.
IMO we need more eyes on this by those that understand the 3 committees well. I’m well versed in Lapidary Jewelry and Glass blowing and understand the issues ahead, and how best to sell us all together marketing wise.
I’ve already proposed a wet grinding double diamond wheel station that we could house for all 3 to use. Ceramics could grind glaze runs and sharp corners, and glass could grind burs on slumps or molds. Lapidary could use it to grind big shapes putting less pressure on the expensive resin wheels use.
The diamond wheels for this setup are 6” by 1.5” for a 3” face on aluminum centered wheels, so that would stop the fears of our epoxy wheels getting loaded with ppl sneaking a grind in to clean up THIER issues and ruining lapidary wheels. When someone does this it kills the whole set, as they load glass or ceramics into the resin wheel.
And all of lapidarys equipment thus far is on loan to jewelry as the custodians. To the tune of $9k right now. Someone already ignored the training only tags and ruined a set of $500 wheels grinding god knows what. I’m not comfortable wit my machine and wheels across the way out of site. I can’t speak for Nadira but I would guess she feels the same.