About Us
Luki Lapidary began January 1st, 2022.
Luke and Kimberly Wilcox decided to go on a short vacation to Kansas City, KS as a small getaway from our 8 children that we love and raise. We also love to visit antique shops whenever we run across one. While in Missouri, we visited an antique mall and viewed a booth which displayed all sorts of minerals, crystals, and tons of polished items. One of our daughters loved her small crystal collection that she has set up in her room, and Kim and I decided to pick her up a few gifts to take back home to her.
While continuing on our travel back home, after we stopped for the night we looked at the gifts we bought. Upon closer look at these beautiful crystals, we were in awe over its beauty and contemplated on its creation. I suppose it would be fair to say that we were instantly hooked.
The following day, we found a rock shop along our route back home and decided to go shopping….this time for ourselves! We picked up a few interesting pieces and soon started our own small collection of different minerals and stones that we found to be fascinating!
In no time, our collection grew and grew until we really didn’t have room in our display cabinet to fit them all!
It was time to box up the older specimens we had so we had more room for new items that we accumulated. We really liked the look of highlighting the beauty in polished rock carvings and slabs. We had quite a few rough rock laying around that we found beautiful…from Kona Dolomite, to all sorts of colorful jaspers, and wondered what they would look like if they were polished up! However, we had one problem….we had no idea where to start!?!
We love to learn different things, and decided that if we were as devoted to our hobby as we thought we were, we had a LOT to learn.
YouTube, here we come!
We learned all sorts of things about rock formation, crystaline growth patterns, the chemical makeup of different stones, and especially about cutting and polishing these gorgeous gifts from nature!
We started out using a tile saw, ordered boxes of thundereggs, and countertop polishing pads that I could use with my drill press so I could polish the stones I just cut. I reached out to countless rockhounds and YouTubers to bombard them with questions.
Soon, we bought our first slab saw from Highland Park…our first “real” piece of lapidary equipment.
After slabbing hundreds of pieces, and experimenting with what kind of things I could make, we started to make towers and points. Nobody on YouTube explained how to do this, so I had a lot of trial and error. Broken pieces, or anything less than perfect would not go to waste…I cut them down even more for tumbling!
We created our business name, and filed paperwork. Our name “Luki” was created by mixing our names….Lu from Luke, and Ki from Kimberly.
We accumulated hundreds of polished items, and I was told I was very good at polishing and making towers. I certainly didn’t want to throw away all of these beauties just because I didn’t have room for them, so we joined our friends and became a vendor at a sales event at our local mall. We couldn’t believe it, but we sold out of almost everything!!!
Back to the workshop I went, and started cutting and polishing even more…this time, I was driven by the excitement of such a good response by our community. It was so cool that a hobby that I grew to love, was turning into a profitable business!
We decided that we were ready to vend at one of the largest local event in our area, the Flag City Balloon Festival. Balloon Fest is a 2 day event, where hot air balloons would fly in, families could spend time together to shop and eat at local vendors, and live music would be played.
The weather was rough, as one of the storms that rolled through was just about a monsoon…..but once again, we nearly sold out!
We started to live stream online, making custom cabochons that our customer could design and watch it being made live. Quite often, our customers would challenge us by choosing different material that normally isn’t made into a cabochon such as hexagonite (a form of tremolite). I believed that whenever a customer would challenge me, it was another great oppertunity to learn and fine-tune my skills in lapidary.
Little by little we grew and were able to offer our customers different materials, custom cabochon shapes, wire-wrapping, and jewelry setting services.
Our love for lapidary, and our love for our customers drives us to be the best in the industry. Each piece that we make, we make for ourselves. If it’s not good enough for us….it’s not good enough for you. Because of this, our standards of what we deem is acceptable is extremely high.
We want Luki Lapidary to be a well known name in the jewelry and rock world, and will always strive to be better and better. We are often buying new machines, polishing media, and learning new techniques to be better.
We do what we do for YOU. The feeling we get when we see a customer smile (or cry) because they are so happy is unexplainable. It is an honor and a privilege to be the shop that you turn to when you want a high quality piece.
So in conclusion….
We are here to serve you with everything you need. If it’s outside of our scope of expertise, we will give you different contacts to reach out to so you get what you want. Why? Because YOU COME FIRST!
We feel that God has given us a gift of talent in the lapidary world, and to pass on this talent to people like you. Each piece is special and unique, just like each one of us.
Like us, if you have a passion and interest in something…then do it! Don’t let anything or anyone (including yourself) stop you. You can do it! Life is too short to deny yourself of happiness.
We love you all….and we thank you for choosing Luki Lapidary.
