The Department of Geology Lapidary Facility provides numerous services for both students and researchers at Lakehead University.  The Lapidary facility has a wide range of equipment available for sample preparation.  These include slab saws and core saw, jaw crusher for coarse crushing, and agate mills for preparing powders.  Additionally, the facility has the capability to perform grain size separation, feldspar staining, heavy liquid separation, and magnetic separation. Our experienced technicians, Kristi Tavener and Jonas Valiunas, can prepare samples for a variety of analysis technique, whether it be standard or polished thin sections for petrographic studies, double polished sections for fluid inclusion analysis, powdering or polishing samples for geochemistry, or polished disks and pucks for scanning electron microscopy.  This in-house facility ensures that students and faculty have access to a range of quality resources which allows for the rapid progression of their learning and research.

Though the main function of the Lapidary Facility is to promote the research and learning of the faculty and students at Lakehead University, the lapidary facility is available to perform commercial work for external clients as well.  For information about service rates and timeframes please contact Kristi Tavener or Jonas Valiunas.

Kristi Tavener                                                           Jonas Valiunas
Centennial Building Room CB0012A                      Centennial Building Room CB0012A
Phone: (807) 343-8677                                              Phone: (807) 343-8677
Email: ktavener@lakeheadu.ca                               Email: jvaliuna@lakeheadu.ca