Post by Deleted on Jan 25, 2008 23:02:12 GMT -5
OK, I know I went too far with the title lol! I know some of you hate the term B.O but I am too lazy to write "Boulder Opal".
Today on my day off and after a week of working my tail off I cut & cabbed some B.O
. I cut three different stones all with a different type of matrix. There is the red, very nice on polishing and hard. The dark brown very hard and also takes a really good polish. Then there's the light brown, the crappiest of all but with very bright opal inside. Most all had pits in one form or another but was workable though grinding till smooth. The light brown had a very beautiful blue opal flash in it, but was also a pain in the arse. The light brown was the trickiest because the intense blue opal was very thin and took real careful grinding. If I were to grind till smooth all the opal would be gone. There were several pits in between and had to break out a glue similar to opticon to fill in to keep the opal. While letting it set for a few min then grinding and sanding till smooth. The final result is to keep the opal intact while working around the pitted brown matrix. Some of you have been asking me for tips and hope this helps. I do not claim to be a expert by any means on opal and am still learning myself.
Here are some photos of the of the three different stones and the four cabs I have made from them. Some I polished on both sides. Here they are and hope this helps some of you.
Grinding stage:
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i6.photobucket.com/albums/y242/jademonger/BO11.jpg
[/IMG]
From these cuts, As you can see B.O is really messy:
A real interesting one I got from stone full of opal. This one had some pits too:
From this stone:
You can see where I made the cut for this cab:
My pug dog "Max" still wondering why I am taking photos of rocks lol!
Today on my day off and after a week of working my tail off I cut & cabbed some B.O
. I cut three different stones all with a different type of matrix. There is the red, very nice on polishing and hard. The dark brown very hard and also takes a really good polish. Then there's the light brown, the crappiest of all but with very bright opal inside. Most all had pits in one form or another but was workable though grinding till smooth. The light brown had a very beautiful blue opal flash in it, but was also a pain in the arse. The light brown was the trickiest because the intense blue opal was very thin and took real careful grinding. If I were to grind till smooth all the opal would be gone. There were several pits in between and had to break out a glue similar to opticon to fill in to keep the opal. While letting it set for a few min then grinding and sanding till smooth. The final result is to keep the opal intact while working around the pitted brown matrix. Some of you have been asking me for tips and hope this helps. I do not claim to be a expert by any means on opal and am still learning myself.Here are some photos of the of the three different stones and the four cabs I have made from them. Some I polished on both sides. Here they are and hope this helps some of you.
Grinding stage:
[/IMG]
From these cuts, As you can see B.O is really messy:
A real interesting one I got from stone full of opal. This one had some pits too:
From this stone:
You can see where I made the cut for this cab:
My pug dog "Max" still wondering why I am taking photos of rocks lol!
