I totally agree with everything you said here. I just cannot imagine wearing ear buds for 15-18 hours straight every day as a solution for my hearing loss. I almost don’t even notice my aids in my ears anymore.

PSA: Take care of your ears everyone, hearing loss sucks big time.

Yes, and I seriously doubt this is for moderate to severe loss. Most aids for that category get custom molds of the ear canal. Very likely this is about getting approval for the hearing test and subsequent audio curves.

As a hearing aid wearer myself, I would question the validity of this as a viable alternative to real hearing aids for moderate to severe loss.

Of course many people with hearing loss will use these instead of getting professionally tested and fitted.

This is what I do… find a comfortable position, then start relaxing all of your muscles.

Start with your toes … given them a wiggle and relax them. Slowly move up your body into your torso… then down your arms, and finally your neck and head.

I’m usually out before I get to my arms.

This is a great movie!

Rumor has it, the monorail will be dismantled in the next couple of years due to not being able to get parts.

And this surprises anyone?

I’ve used dental wax for years to hold the stones to the dop and it does a good job as long as you don’t use too much force when cutting. The key to using the wax is to make sure you heat both the stone and dop enough for the wax to adhere. You can tell that has done so when the wax edge no longer seems to curl under and instead seems to have a clean line with the surface.

I’ve used super glue as well depending on the situation… but the cure time and difficulty in getting it off the dop and cleaning the stone of the residue makes it not worth it in my opinion.

This is interesting… I would not have considered using some of the tools of the trade for the purposes you have outlined.

You can see and read about some of the equipment I use in this post. I did a whole series of posts around how I cut stones.

In terms of equipment, there is a pinned post in this community that has some links as well.

Happy to answer any questions you might have.

Nope, this stone and its siblings were given to me to cut.