Petrified wood is often used in lapidary work. It is cut into shapes for making jewelry, sawn into blocks to make bookends, sawn into thick slabs to make table tops, and sawn into thin slabs for clock faces. It can be cut into cabochons or used to make tumbled stones and many other crafts. Small pieces of petrified wood can be placed in a rock tumbler to make tumbled stones.

Only a small fraction of petrified wood is suitable for lapidary work. Poorly preserved specimens, those with lots of voids or closely-spaced fractures do not polish well or break while being worked. Specimens with no fractures or voids and with spectacular color are highly prized for lapidary work.

Lapidary-grade petrified wood: A nice piece of petrified wood suitable for lapidary work. The pore spaces in the wood have been completely silicified, and the piece is relatively free of fractures. It also has nice color. Petrified wood like this is very hard to find. Specimen is about three inches across.