Thanks numpty
I cut quite a lot, but if I have already a doped stone- cut and polished about 10 to 15 - minutes - depending off course on the shape.
Carving much longer some I have worked on for days.
As you can imagine the price can differ quite a bit - depending on the quality of the opal, colours, its size, what gem-field it's from and so on.
Rough boulder opal can be anything from a dollar or two (even less) to a couple of thousand dollars for a good stone.
Though the best rough opals I usually sell in parcels only.
This one is more a collector stone than something for jewellery.
It has been described to me as "sunstone in aquamarine" (if anyone can confirm? - it polished well with cerium).
It is full of inclusions, which make its beauty, but you need a loupe to see it!
It has a few cracks, I'm glad it didn't break while cutting or polishing.
I haven't been able to capture a good face up image yet. My nikkon captures the veil inclusions so well it crowds out the facet design. Yet, when viewed with the naked eye the inclusions are barely visible. The iphone takes a really good face up photo which is more in-line with what the eye is seeing but I don't have a cable to load the pictures up yet.
A piece of Mintabie opal I had a muck around with last night . It has an annoying potch line in it, I figure once it's set you wont be able to see it .
Not sure what I'm going to do with it yet Don't really like wire wrapping, I'd probably put it in a simple gold bezel setting if I was going to do anything with it.
I have put up a pic of a gemmy little piece I did this morning The camera seems to be playing funny buggers at the moment apologies for the image quality.
Wow Colin the focus may be tough to get working properly but the color is there! Not fond of WW too myself, nor the missus Lemme see if I can snap a shot of the latest black matrix I'm working on