Digging up old dirt

The proceeds of a mis-spent morning:

Chrysocolla 1.5cts 6.1mm across 6.8mm deep

Hi Pat,

Sorry, although there's no activity from you, I guess I may have thought you were probably in touch with the thread given it is on topic for your interest.

Re reposting the images, there is a chance this might happen in the next couple of days!! My mobile battery is dead and I need a recharge in order to log on to Yahoo (Flickr hosting my images). If you'd care to check out my Flickr site then you'll find a few images (none of those missing from this thread unfortunately but I can make those visible later for you). www.flickr.com/photos/7571246@N02. Most of the stones shown at the minute are hand-cut, but there are a few others that are facetted I'll post below.

I've also cut some additional stones that for one reason and another have had trouble photographing since the end of last year, but I've cut for example Hungarian agate (there's one on flickr) with a facetted approach, taking the concept of a bevel-edged cab one step further. These take the approach of squaring off a small cab: ring cabochons I believe the term is.

I almost suggested here earlier that you might wish to consider cutting stones (rather than facetting rough) as a precursor to facetting. Personally I have trouble cutting glass / (non-gem) quartz as some suggest as an intro, since I wholeheartedly agree (you'll have read the same in Herbst) that the result just isn't worth the time invested. At least with a facetted approach to turquoise / agate, there is a worthwhile aesthetic at the end of the effort; the rough is affordable and the stuff I turn to facetting is usually much smaller than a cab.

Anyway, to some eye candy...

Cutting turquoise
The point of this image was to show white swarf for another thread here, but I don't believe I ever posted it there. Stone size is approx 10mm length, was cut and polished on the dop and then I learned the lesson that I should have either used dop wax or burned the glue and let the stone cool. I believe the retained heat was responsible for softening the stabiliser and after finishing, the stone broke on removal. I would have been gutted but for the fact that it is all learning... just some learning is more painful than others. The pain was in the time, but this was just a small offcut from cabbing that would have made a lovely ring cab had it turned out.



Hungarian Agate
This was an ugly freeform cab that teased me for about 3 months. Yes, I could have cut it, but not efficiently. I left it until I could see what it 'wanted' to be (time to book another appointment!!) Then it was tricky to polish because the 'table' retains a small degree of curve from when it was a cab...





Facetted waterweb turquoise




Lavic Jasper




Bolivian Chevron Amethyst




Facetted waterweb turquoise




6mm Chrysocolla
This was just a tiny nugget of compact perfectly coloured chrysocolla. It was an offcut from cabbing, that as a reasonably regular 8mm rough cuboid would never have made a cabochon, was just far too nice to consign to the bin.





Sorry if you have seen some of these before, but it would be an undertaking to work out what I've shown everywhere else before.

Hopefully this will keep you entertained until I can retreive some others for you

Super cool Chas.

Hope u are well.