A cut and polish of this Australian Black Crystal opal to a freeform gem

hey and welcome to adelstones this is my first video where I'm going to cut this beautiful black Crystal opal from lightning Ridge Australia it's a beautiful piece as you can see already the color just screaming to get out and I'm so excited to work this piece it has set on top a lot of it and some interesting inclusions so we'll see what happens when I'm going to put it on the wheel there are no cracks it's clean so I'm very happy with this piece that I got from Berglund to Opel on yeah on Facebook that's where I get some of my opal so now I'm just working this piece on my diamonds wheel and it's a coarse wheel so it works quite fast I have to be careful not to go too far with this but in the beginning process of this largest stone it works really well so I noticed that there's quite a bit of sand in the in the face already with inspecting it and I'm just grinding it away as the sides are quite clean I didn't need to really work the sides in the beginning so I'm just cleaning the whole Stone up and see what I have and already I can see a little bit of the green and purple color popping up in the face that's really exciting it's really fun part of cutting a cutting process cleaning the sides a little bit taking it in so just assessing the situation a little bit better as a rough piece and yeah wow so there the color is already showing up very exciting of course I need to flatten out the back a little bit see what's going on there you can see some quite gnarly inclusions but I don't know maybe maybe it will will be okay so cleaning it up takes some time with this bigger piece but it's a very fun process because the colors are with each touch of the wheel you can see the color coming out better and better and uh yeah it's just a beautiful bright fresh green a color in this Crystal and together with a beautiful purple Hues makes it really a nice piece already so I'm over the moon with it I'm working it quite quite confidently I know I can see the sand inclusions I know where to go but I'm not sure wow look at the color great I'm not sure where I'm going to take this piece as a shape yet um probably I'm gonna go for a free form shape because it's such a beautiful large piece and maybe there's gonna be a good oval inside or a different kind of shape but I don't know I just um my first insights my first assessment would be it's going to be a nice freeform shaped opal stone and yeah we'll see so the colors are really popping that's amazing but yeah they're still sense so I need to inspect it a little bit more and see where I'm at now so I see a couple of big inclusions in the bottom I'm not too worried about that there's one in the side also that's reaching in quite far so if I were to cut all off to cut off all those inclusions I could end up with a small clean beautiful Crystal but I don't know I think inclusions in this kind of black Crystal opal they add also or they can add a lot of character and depth to the stone so I'm not sure yet what I'm what I'm going to do with it I'm just cleaning it up more and more and quite confident that a lot of the sand in the in the face is going to come out over the course of this process on this diamond wheel um yeah so this is my first uh video recording and I took some time to create all these videos and just with my iPhone of course nothing too special and I hope to just share this experience with you it's one of the pieces that I've was just so excited about to to cut and yeah I decided to record everything and I'm cutting here in quite a normal speed but you can you can see the video is twice the speed as it normally is so I just forwarded it a little bit just to make the video the whole video is shorter and you can still see quite well what I'm doing at this moment and um yeah hopefully that's okay and it's just an experiment this whole video for me also let me know also in the comments what you think and uh if you want me to make more videos or this kind of content you appreciate um and if you have questions about any other stones in my webshop or pricing or what whatever you you want to know just reach out to me and I'm also learning the art of making jewelry but that's still early stage but yeah if you have any interest in that kind of um that kind of piece here see a stone you want to create a ring or a pendant and I can help you out like I'm I'm okay with it I like to try it but it will be a project together okay so back to this beautiful piece of opal and cleaning up more and more and yeah still sand but the pl of color already is so cool I'm really happy with this piece and this is actually as I was told by the by the person who sold it to me that um is also a fossil fossilized piece of organic material so millions of years ago opal was formed in the the central Australia where this piece was found in lightning Ridge and it used to be a plant the plant died got into the into ground and the plant material was replaced with opal so in this case yeah black Crystal opal which is very rare and very beautiful so I'm working it more and more and really happy to see more of the sand coming out gives me confidence and just working my way towards a more cleaner and pleasing shape cleaner facing pleasing shape at this point really starting to grow confidence in going for a free form shape probably value-wise and maybe um for like pure jewelry purposes sometimes like a fixed oval shape or anything like that could be more easily sellable or anything like that but um I don't really mind that too much I just want to get the best results for each particular Stone and in this case I just want to really bring out the best of this fossil actually and and keep inclusions and and don't mind that too much but it's definitely you want to go for a clean and pleasing shape and clean off most of the sand as possible but there's a couple of inclusions that I already can tell that maybe I'll just uh I'll leave them and be okay with it the color is just popping so who cares about that then so there's a big surprise at this moment for me because um as you can clearly see the the green and blue colors are in this piece and I'm about to discover that there's also red in this piece and the red color is quite rare especially if you combine it with this kind of material and yeah red is a rare color in Opel so mostly also people a lot of people like it a lot but just a combination of red and blue and green and purple and just like the rainbow spectrum of colors it's really just what everyone is looking for of course and this piece is predominantly green with purple but there it is there is definitely red in there and just like I noticed it and I was like oh my God that's so cool that's so so special uh just a big gift from this Stone already so now I'm going to put the crystal on the the dubstick so I do this by heating the wax and heating up a little bit the the opal so it's warm and then it's sticky so I put the wax on the on the opal and I just shape it and make it pleasing and nice and easy to work with and then it it's ready to go back on the wheel so there we go I'm now switching over to a 600 grit wheel which gives me the opportunity to shape the opal more and clean it up like in a more finer detail to The Superficial sand spots and everything I'm able to get out and then you can really at this stage see the play of color coming to life which is really one of the best and fun steps in cutting opal yeah I wonder what you what your opinion is about the shape that's now really coming to the stone if you find it pleasing let me know in the comments be curious to hear what you think and also of course what you think of this video it's a big experiment it's one of my first videos of cutting an opal and I took really my time to to create all the little videos of the process and steps um and yeah just give you a little bit of the techniques that I'm following also with cutting the whole twisting and turning the open now on the dubstick against the wheel and moving from one corner to the other just trying to get a nice round shape yeah and see the colors are coming more and more and so there's a still a color layer of color so I need to be aware that I'm not going in too far so there's one inclusion and in the face and yeah it just again it gives me doubts because if I take it in further and I really take it out I might lose the red color that's showing up right there really really strong and also the color that's now on the opal it's really on the face of it so if I grind down further the color intensity might diminish or the red color might disappear so that's a big gamble and actually the inclusion that's in the face is not really that not that bad it's just part of the whole experience of this piece of fossil and you can see the inclusions really are interesting especially if you were to take a micro asteroid microscope or anything and look at it from up close so I'm really happy with the shape and how it's looking the play of color is amazing so this stage I'm thinking okay final grid and then eventually like a 1200 grit and then eventually after the 1200 grid I'm just going to put it on a felt wheel and give it a good serum oxide polish so I started this opal business well business opal hobby I should say during Corona a couple years ago and yeah I really enjoy cutting opal and I enjoy also um yeah sharing my love for Opel with you I sell a bunch of my stones in a web shop and I I post them on Instagram here I hope you all enjoy that and um very curious also to know if you like this video and if you were to yeah [Music] still in a good serum oxide polish this is a really really cool moment where it's really like you're unveiling the stone that's inside that piece of rough opal and since it's a black Crystal opal it's yeah well it's a very dark Crystal but I need to look into it it's really the black one pure black one but it's a very dark Crystal opal and the result here is amazing I'm so happy over the moon with it green blue purple Flash almost looks like it has a little bit of a little bit of Flagstone kind of pattern or broad flash but there's also like the red the redness in it which makes it really a rare piece and very special it's quite large also as you can see so it's it's an amazing piece of opal and I enjoyed cutting it I enjoyed sharing this experience with you and yeah just visit my web shop adelstones.com and yeah tell your friends about me who might also enjoy this content and follow me on Instagram thanks

Channel: Edelstones

Views: 35,856

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Id: mb-VF75Nx2g

Length: 14min 34sec (874 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 17 2023