steelandstone
has rocks in the head
Member since September 2008
Posts: 500
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Post by steelandstone on Mar 11, 2014 5:11:29 GMT -5
Oh, me and opal are a match made in heaven, lol. She is an expensive mistress, and often treats me badly, but I'm hooked beyond all hope I'm down to rubble now, or hunt and peck rough, and it's hard to find the good stuff that cuts easy. Everybody knows about opal, and they are too willing to pay too much, so the price goes up and the quality goes down. Are you still working that stuff you got from Gene? I still want to go down there and hand pick my rough like you did!! Tony Yeah I still have about 70lbs to go through. There is a lot with some really awesome small "nuts" of opal but it is surrounded by that soft maxtrix. I slabbed up and stabilized 30lbs or so last year with the sodium silicate solution. I need to start going through it. This one is my favorite, in the sun it looks like a dove in the middle. This one was surrounded by good hard host rock This is what I have the most of. The opal is nice but it has the soft maxtrix around it. It stabilizes just fine but as you know is a real b#t*h to polish and not undercut.
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Post by Tony W on Mar 11, 2014 12:13:31 GMT -5
Uh, oh, now you've riled up the beast, lol. I'm headed out now to cut some opal. These are great! I love me some blue flash.... I wouldn't have thought to frame the opal in the sand like that last one, but it works great! Mostly I just cut the sand out, or grind from the back or side to try and get rid of it. Yet, the soft stuff, not the hard iron stone matrix stuff is where I find my most surprises. I've gotten iron stone stuff from him lately, and he says it's the better stuff, but I liked grinding off mud and finding a gem in there buried deep If you have some of the soft stuff you don't want to fool with let me know! I think the iron stone stuff just puts me off because I have to grind so hard with my 40 grit wheel to get the stuff to move around, and the mud/sand stuff just sluffs off like butter, lol. Guess I'm lazy. He'll send me nuts that he's taken the goodies out of, and I'm left with the rim, which has great color, but it's difficult deciding how I want to cut it, then it's a hard grind, so it goes back in the box, for an easier one to figure out, lol, and now I'm down to cutting the hard stuff, finally, and I've been procrastinating about it, lol. My avatar was some mud rough that didn't look like it had anything in it, then that piece began to appear Tony
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steelandstone
has rocks in the head
Member since September 2008
Posts: 500
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Post by steelandstone on Mar 11, 2014 15:59:17 GMT -5
Uh, oh, now you've riled up the beast, lol. I'm headed out now to cut some opal. These are great! I love me some blue flash.... I wouldn't have thought to frame the opal in the sand like that last one, but it works great! Mostly I just cut the sand out, or grind from the back or side to try and get rid of it. Yet, the soft stuff, not the hard iron stone matrix stuff is where I find my most surprises. I've gotten iron stone stuff from him lately, and he says it's the better stuff, but I liked grinding off mud and finding a gem in there buried deep If you have some of the soft stuff you don't want to fool with let me know! I think the iron stone stuff just puts me off because I have to grind so hard with my 40 grit wheel to get the stuff to move around, and the mud/sand stuff just sluffs off like butter, lol. Guess I'm lazy. He'll send me nuts that he's taken the goodies out of, and I'm left with the rim, which has great color, but it's difficult deciding how I want to cut it, then it's a hard grind, so it goes back in the box, for an easier one to figure out, lol, and now I'm down to cutting the hard stuff, finally, and I've been procrastinating about it, lol. My avatar was some mud rough that didn't look like it had anything in it, then that piece began to appear Tony Tony, If you want to trade some hard stuff for some soft stuff let me know I am sure we can work something out.
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Post by Donnie's Rocky Treasures on Mar 13, 2014 7:54:29 GMT -5
I really like the ruggedness of the ring. Also real cool how you combined the different metals.
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classybroad
starting to shine!
Member since June 2009
Posts: 32
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Post by classybroad on Mar 18, 2014 12:12:42 GMT -5
So cool! I love the contrast between the rustic metals and the polished, faceted peridot.
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Joe
spending too much on rocks
Member since July 2014
Posts: 274
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Post by Joe on Jul 30, 2014 11:55:42 GMT -5
Beautiful piece for sure!!! Love peridot/olivine! We have alot here just need equipment and faceting skills.
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bentiron
noticing nice landscape pebbles
Member since September 2011
Posts: 85
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Post by bentiron on Aug 1, 2014 18:17:59 GMT -5
For all the grief you had with the solder it turned out to be a very nice piece, nicely done.
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Post by snowmom on Aug 4, 2014 6:04:14 GMT -5
you came out on top in that fight. First class ring, texture is such a good emphasis for the contrast between metals and really lets the peridot shine. Wonderful work!
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RickN
noticing nice landscape pebbles
Member since November 2011
Posts: 85
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Post by RickN on Aug 7, 2014 11:42:43 GMT -5
Cool designs. Nice work.
RickN
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Post by Toad on Aug 7, 2014 12:53:11 GMT -5
Great ring, Phil. Always love seeing your metal work.
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Post by iant on Aug 9, 2014 6:04:57 GMT -5
As others have said, the clean setting, sharp angles of the beautiful cut stone contrast amazingly well with the rugged textured ring. Fantastic! Oh, and I need to start looking in on the metalwork section much more than I currently do!
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