Slightly older, I graduated to polishing cabachons on a grinder system.
Teenage me learned to solder gold rings to new sizes, which benefitted young electrical engineering me - gold and lead solder very similarly.
All of this, I now realize, was more-or-less a planned arc/quasi-apprenticeship training for the family store.
I’ve buckets of agates and jasper, among other things (like petrified wood) that I’ve found in fields while doing my ag job here in the willamette valley of Oregon. Oregon as a whole is amazing for rockhounding. There are some spots where I can’t go a several feet without seeing a 1cm or larger agate just laying there. Makes it hard to concentrate. I’ve mostly got it out of my system now though.
Cleaned up a bunch thanks to an ultrasonic cleaner, and one day will tumble a bunch to give away.
Among others, but this one is one that is well known among gemhounds/lapidarists.