craftgrrl | hand drilling jade? (Reply)

Aieeeg.. Well, my boyfriend's birthday is coming up on the 27th, and now that I finally figured out what I'm going to make, I've run into a dilhemma.

Okay, I have had these two flat jade pendants for years, one has a phoenix and one has a dragon on it(a chinese thing -- the dragon represents the man and the phoenix represents the woman, symbols of eternal love, etc). I suppose I've been saving them up until the right time. ^__^;; But anyway, I want to turn them into bracelets, there's already one tiny hole on top of each piece. I want to put correponding holes on the bottom.

I looked up on jade and it says it's a hardness of 5 or 6, aiee. So I'm not sure what I can do to drill myself. These things are special to me so I don't want to end up breaking them under my clumsy fingers. As a last resort, I can go to this gem driller, but he's notoriously cranky at young people so I'd rather avoid him if I can.. @o;

Anyone have any ideas of hand drilling? Agh, and of course, for HIS bracelet, the hole I need to drill is through the thickest part(about 4-5 mm) while the rest of the pendant is around 1-2 mm. Grr..

Thanks in advance!