Night Stone Jewelry

Well, I’ve been cutting opal for over 3 years now. This past week marked the 200th opal cabochon that I’ve cut which was of sufficient quality to “bag and tag”. Meaning I liked it enough to measure it, weight it, and all that.

So, simple though it may be, here is 0200CP12m

Still no ID on this, but it really came out interesting.

While Virginia doesn’t have the most exciting rocks, we go looking for them anyway, and just pick up whatever looks nice. Mostly for our gardens, but on this trip we were hoping to get some Unakite.
Unfortunately, I totally forgot to really study pictures of slabs and rough online before going, so we only had basic memory to go on. We found some stuff that is definitely *not* Unakite, but took home anyway as it is my understanding that the location we went to also has some jasper. There are a *lot* of different kinds of jasper across the world, so I have no idea what we were even looking for. Just that it wasn’t going to be Ocean Jasper, as that is from Madagascar.
Pictures were taken dry and outside, but it was a little overcast. A couple of the closeup images have been enhanced using brightness/contrast in Photoshop to try and get a bit closer to the color in brighter light.

0197CP12m 15mm x 8mm x 4.5mm 3.40c
This opal has a good amount of color, though it is a bit directional, and not always real bright

This is a simple black jade cabochon made from some scrap I had on my shelf. It’s about 12 to 15mm in size. The backdrop has been photoshopped out on this one which makes it pretty easy to see the dust that managed to stick to the stone.

an opal and some amethyst

Made a number of opals tonight, including two really nice doublets.

0188CP12m

0189CP This one has a lot more flash to it than it would reveal for the camera. 16mm x 9mm x 5mm 4.5c

0190CP Killer broad flash on this one. Green and yellow depending on angles. 13mm x 8mm x 3.5mm Sadly, it has a fracture on the back.

0191CP An odd shaped opal with a stripe of color through it. 14mm x 9mm x 3mm 2.8c

0192CP 13mm x 7mm x 4mm 2.35c. Nice freeform. Has reds from the sides and green from the face.

0193CP 13mm x 8mm x 2mm 1.9C It has color within the inclusions, so I made something of it.

0194CP_D The first of two doublets and wow does it shine. 8mm x 5mm x 3mm 1.1c. This was from a piece of shell, so it does have stripes across the face, but it outshines that.

0195CP_D The second doublet. 7mm x 5mm x 3mm .95c Amazing color on this from every angle

3 out of 5 isn’t bad (the other two crumbled when cutting them).

The spencer material I have is offcuts mostly, so it’s not the most stable, but the stuff that is stable comes out pretty nice. Two of these have some fire to them, one has a nice green broadflash. Of course the fire refuses to be photographed. :/

Have nearly completed the basic frame/legs for half of the workbench. Due to some wood warpage it needed a small shim on one of the back legs, but overall it is doing quite well. I can sit/stand on it, so that should say quite a bit.

Taking a break for dinner right now, and having eaten I decided to cut a rock. Now, this isn’t just any rock. It’s special. It is known as “Driveway Granite”. I’ve been seeing this stuff all over our neighborhood as they’ve been building homes, and have been wondering for some time how well it would cut. It’s solid enough that it doesn’t crumble, but it certainly isn’t anything spectacular.

I needed a break from working with wood, and since my lapidary side is set up now, I took to making some rocks.

0187CP12m. This one came out of a rock that was very difficult for me to cut when I originally got the rough that it came with. I decided to see what I could do with it and managed to pull some nice stuff out of it.

This one is TigerEye

And I also made a nice Jade and opal intarsia cabochon (11mm x 7mm x 4mm)

So it’s been a little while since I posted, but I’ve good reason. I’ve not been making jewelry. Instead, I set out to remodel my work room so it is a brighter, cleaner, safer environment.

Before:

That is the first picture. I had torn out half the carpet in the room before doing anything else as a bit of a way to kick my butt into gear. After that I moved everything but my lapidary workbench out of the room and got busy tearing out carpet, painting, putting in vinyl tile and installing ventilation.

The room now looks like this:

Now I’m starting the next phase of the project. This is a bit more difficult. I’m going to build my own jewelers workbench. I’m no experienced designer, so it’s probably a bit of a monster, but if it works, it works.

Here is the first piece I have completed. This is first of four frame pieces.