it's with a heavy heart that i have to tell you that i'm giving up opal
are you kidding i've got opal fever
i promise i will never play that music again
promise so i went mining the other day just in my back garden and i was digging and digging and
digging and digging digging digging and digging and digging and digging digging and digging
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and i found it the most beautiful so i got this beautiful opal and it's a nice knobby
opal from lightning ridge it has beautiful black pouch on the back and it has a nice cap on the
top with a blue and green color bar going right through it now i've got a really good chance of
this cutting a nice black opal so i've looked at it through the light through the i've looked at it
with the flashlight and it seems like everywhere inside and i can't be 100 sure until i actually
grind it down but it looks like that color bar is clean right through so this may be an easy cut and
i might be able to cut you know cut something like a a 10 character even so we will see let's
get on the wheel and have a go so here we have our knobby we've looked to it already to see that the
color bar seems clear and we've got our black potch on the back now that black potch as you
can see is quite flat and thin so if i round up that back too much i'll start to lose that black
on the back around the edges and i'll start to get a crystal stone around the edges with a black
center so i do have to be a bit cautious about that back but i do like it it's nice and black
so my goal is to now just take it around the edges just to clean it up have a better look and then
we'll take off that top which is my favorite part alrighty so let's get the machine going
that's the wrong machine
there we go we got it
um so i do like the fact that that's cleaning up in there looking a lot cleaner that's pretty cool
and now what's happening is that potch as you can see where i've ground it is starting to turn black
so i'll do a bit here and you'll see how it turns black
you can see a little spot starting to turn black
very good well that color bar you can see there's a big quite a dip there but
um essentially this is looking pretty good there is a web line or like a second bar
just down below so i do have to be a little bit cautious of that but um everything else
seems to be pretty much in order it might be time for us to do my favorite part
and that is to take that top off to see how the color looks alright so i'm going in
so
okay so for the moment there's not you're not really getting a good idea of what that color
looks like down below because there's still this is residual black pouch from the top
and while there is a little bit bit of color there it's not broad enough over the stone to
make a big deal of so i'm going to keep on going down until i get past all of this
it's not looking too bad so i can pretty much stop there so that i can start working on a dome
when i do shape it a bit more this little cut right there that cut is going to get in the way
a bit and i have to bring it in and then round it over for the dome so this sand spot this cut and
that's pretty insignificant that one that one will come out with hardly any work at all there
you go just about out so now i'm going to just do some shaping to get this stone to a nice pleasing
shape
all right we're getting close this um this sand spot i think when i start to roll that dome
i think that sand spot should mostly come out if it doesn't i'll have to bring it in just a little
bit further actually maybe it won't come out we'll see so now i'm going to start rolling that dome
so this color is just getting better and better the further i go down
but i will there will be a point where i have to actually leave it um and not go too far down
and that's a a point that many people can make a mistake on
knowing when is too much or when is enough
beautiful look at that
so now i'm just rounding that back a little bit smoothing it up
just so it's nice and smooth and even for when i put it on the dot stick
but i am very very chuffed about that very nice
i'm happy oh yeah look at that look at that stone
now because last week i took you through the whole process of cutting a stone that i haven't done for
a long time this week i'm going to fast forward it make it really quick so it looks like this
stone's going to be around about the 10 9 8 9 10 carats something around there so it is way bigger
than most of the stones i cut and approximately about the right carrot weight that i
predicted as well so let's get this stick all nice and hot
that wax on top
and i'm waving the stone through the heat a bit and now the dop stick is on i do sometimes say
dob stick but it's dope stick and we are ready to polish the oval let's go for it
expelliarmus
so some people ask me how long it takes it really actually takes me
to cut a stone and it really only takes me between 10 minutes and half an hour
cutting opals is so much fun and makes me want a shimmy
polishing the oval is the best part
when you get to see the end result i have now finished polishing the opal
and i'm going to take it off the stick with my 40 year old dopstick taker offerer
i think i got it i did look at that oh yeah
finito let me get the web machine and find out how big it is
okay sorry
8.07 i did say 8 to 10 so 8.07 is pretty good it's a nice stone good dome it's a
black opal definitely it's around about the n3n4 mark and we're looking at around about
a five thousand dollar stone so i'm pretty happy with that
but the question is does it deserve a dance i think not well that's it for this week
i hope you enjoyed it please leave a comment if you like this type of video with a bit more
humor a bit more stupidity and uh still a bit of cutting you get to see a beautiful gem and i'm
stoked with this gem what a pretty stone um and i will see you next week for another one let me know
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