Rough opal cut of the year - I make a huge $45k profit

Join me now for one of the most phenomenal results in

opal

cutting as we explore this amazing Andamooka crystal

opal

. Good morning and welcome to Black Opal direct. My name is Justin. Well, today we have something really special. We have a

rough

endermuka crystal opal and this type of

rough

opal doesn't come out of the ground very often anymore. It's a very, very pretty glass color and, well, from what I can see from the sides and a little glimpses from the top, it shows me what the color could be. amazing all over the stone now I'm going to take the Dremel to this stone to get all those sand stains off the top and hopefully we'll have a beautiful pattern and color all over the piece and that'll

make

me decide if I'm I'm going to cut a nice I carve the whole piece or I'm going to cut it into beautiful symmetrical Gem Stones, so the first thing I do is look at it really well through a loop and use my gem torch to

make

the piece shine.

Highlight it and see where it's clear and where it's not, it doesn't give a complete picture so until you know how that color will face and if it's crystal clear or milky clear, we won't know where it will cut, so let's go. go to the Dremel and play around with it and see if we can expose some of that color. It's been a while since I've had a chance to cut some of this play of color and brightness of this magnitude. This Andamooka piece is one of the very rare gems that came out of the earth many, many

year

s ago and realistically they don't come out of the earth anymore so I'm pretty nervous and excited to cut this gem out and see what comes out of it. the idea of ​​taking All sanding the piece with a Dremel in retrospect probably wasn't a better idea because of the result, but I still swapped out my Dremel bits for a scented diamond bit so I could be a little more aggressive when grinding Andamooka Crystal.

The opal should not be confused with Andamooka matrix opal. There is a big difference between the two. Matrix opal has a lot of host rock, while this type of crystal opal is pure silica and it is a very, very beautiful high quality gem opal, but one of the problem with this type of opal is that you can have a beautiful crystal opal and when you are done cutting it, cotton or white lines inside the stone may come out, and avoiding that is probably the biggest challenge when cutting Andamooka crystal. opal because white lines are considered inclusions that devalue the gem, so for now I'm flying blind.

I have no idea if this piece has a lot of cotton or not. Thanks dremeling. Opal is not something I consider myself an expert on. my father was, but I found that it was really necessary to clean this stone as best as I could to have the possibility of creating many small stones with nice high domes and later I realized that this was really not necessary. but it still doesn't make any difference to the gems in the end. Wow, I said gems. I don't want to give away too much and I must say stick around because the result is incredible.

What I've displayed here is a gorgeous set of colors, but it has some imperfections in the color itself, so I went to the back to see what's underneath that cutting opal. It's a pretty fun expedition when things work out, but I really wasn't ready for it. about to exhibit and I will remember this for the rest of my life, a piece of rough opal that cost me fifteen thousand dollars. I would love to buy 10 more of these depending on how things turn out, so take a look and enjoy what a beautiful play of colors it is. about to be exposed thank you foreigner i still have a little bit more to go to the best the last few remaining inclusions are causing me a bit of chaos because i risk losing that gorgeous pattern on top as i erase every little micro millimeter from above trying to get these sand stains and inclusions out without losing that color is starting to bother me uh sorry for the pun That's right, gorgeous, can you believe all those colors?

The reds, the golds, the greens, the blues, the oranges, it's all in it. the slab and the floral and straw pattern and I didn't mention the pink so when I bought this piece I had a feeling the color would be quite nice on the inside and as I dredged the sand on the side I thought would be where I would like to face it a Once I removed the cotton from the back of the stone, which is one of the best crystal opals I have ever seen, and now I was considering making it into a large carving, but because the pattern separates from the middle To the sides I'm going to focus on one main stone in the middle and then maybe a set of stones around the outside, which means we're going to cut a little bit, but that color is just ridiculous, okay?

So now is the decisive moment. I need to find out and make sure that each stone I am going to cut has the same or very similar best pattern that I can produce from this piece. Now there are three different types of patterns, there's a floral pattern here, there's a nice slab and a floral and straw pattern there and then there's a little more moss floral pattern there, so to make a whole stone, although it would be very pretty, it's not actually going to cut the top top. gems the way I want, I want perfect, perfect gems and the centerpiece will probably be one of the best crystals I think I've ever seen in Andamooka and that's really saying something so I'm just going to do some drawing on the piece and just have an idea of where I could cut off the end stones and where I can get the best, biggest center stone out now that little cloud will eventually come out, but it's starting to make that corner pretty thin, so the best I can do is get it out, so if I come from this angle here, I make a cut there and then I come back and make another cut there I'll save a little bit of weight on that stone, because it's so thin on this side when I come in that the opal will probably settle somewhere over there, so maybe I'll make my cut a little further away.

That way I'm going to go in there and then I'm going to go in there because it's two angles so there's a good example that's going to be a big beautiful gem and I feel very privileged to be able to cut something like amazing like this so I think a slice there and possibly a slice there and then we have this piece here to work with, which is okay, the color, nothing like the color in the middle, but it's still a very pretty, mossy floral pattern, so I think now. We've figured out where we're going to be.

What we're going to do eventually might be cutting off some of those ends there and going for some small stones there as well, but I want to play with that, it's quite a bit. thin on that side I want to play with the stone and see how it looks first, but I think now is the time to remove those ends, so let's go up to the cutter and remove some, let's do it right. So this is probably the scariest part of the whole process: making sure I'm cutting my Slice on that line a little bit away from it just to give me a little more buffer zone for the big, beautiful gem, oh that's it. grabbing.

I love it okay that's one angle this one is okay and now let's get the other foreign side out there so while I'm here I might as well take off a little bit of that edge well how cool is that so this is the main piece and you can see it's going to be a big beautiful gem hopefully that would be the plan so I laid this out and I had to do it on the back just to make sure the color wasn't better on this side and you can see obviously. which is not, this is a much better and better way than I ever thought.

It would be a very, very pretty stone and the pieces I cut are also nice colored pieces and we can make them into a set and we'll see. What's happening? I'll go clean them up some more, so I'll work on the small pieces first and I think I can get a better idea of ​​the Big Stone. The magic color there is really nice. I might even assimilate it. half of that piece there, so the tip broke there because it was too thin, so it doesn't matter, but I'm just going to shape it into a beautiful little crystal.

It is a good little example of a very pretty crystal. That should be a very nice piece now this piece again, very nice color. I'll remove the thin end first and I think we're going to make it a weird little cushion. Beautiful. Okay, nice long beat. Eliminate that pointy. bed, there are a couple of pretty little stones around it, the color is absolutely phenomenal and it is a nice long cushion cut very well, so this piece has layers of color and I think this color on the top is not as good as the one on it's below so I'm just going to do a little Telltale test from a corner and yes I can see a better color match so I'm going to bring this Edge up a little bit more and I dare say that when I bring this down a little bit more, it should improve, here we go, we have it, look at that very pretty color below, take some, let's do some tile cutting, cut that, very good, very nice color again.

I'm very nervous about making this big stone. I hope we get a nice clean piece of that elusive cotton that Andamooka is so famous for. Opal can appear when you least expect it. Okay, there's a little drop shape, a little odd drop, another nice crystal opal, so for the It's a great time to start cleaning up those edges and see where our stone, color and pattern sits best, so Now it's time to ignore the lines I've drawn and look for the biggest and best stone. I can thank you here. That's a pretty big stone, a little bit cut there from my cut, I'll just have to roll it up a little bit to even it out and now there's that cloud that's there and I'm not too happy with it, I need to take a look at it. this Dome and see if I keep all that beautiful play of colors or if it starts to disappear when I roll the Dome.

Sorry, I have to be very careful here while I roll that dye to get rid of that cotton over there. is coming out, but also the color, that beautiful pattern is also disappearing, very, very cautious. I have to be a very big stone, which is surely a very big stone. Now I'm going to even out the backs because realistically, when you cut the Andamooka opal, the thinner the stone, the more crystal it will now become. I'm not trying to grind a beautiful opal just to turn it into crystal because it's already a crystal that's a big beautiful gem, now I can sort it and roll it. those who Dome are a little strange a little more wow wow wow what a great stone it's amazing, oh look at that

huge

, what a

huge

pen, over the

year

s, there have been a handful of gems that sink into history like stones that I will never forget and this is definitely one of them and with that beautiful gem I have gained much more experience on how Andamooka crystal opal can be cut.

The foreigner has the ability to create black opal, white opal, crystal opal and that matrix. The opal that people treat it is one of the most amazing fields as there is a wide variety of gems and one of the rarest types of opal that we have in our possession is from Andamooka and it is that piece called Dwayne the Rock and it is a beautiful and big one. quartz infused opal slab, which is one of the rarest combinations of minerals together and I think there are only three pieces that are quite large in size like this and with this beautiful color, the stone that I am cutting right now.

You can see that it has a very similar color on Duane, so you can imagine what could be inside that big rock. Little foreign exercise for you to leave a comment and guess how many carats this gem weighs. She is great and I would love to hear your opinion. I didn't film myself cutting the smaller stones, the video would be too long, but here's a little snippet of me cutting one. I thought I'd focus on the big gem, so what a finish. what a beautiful big gem and my guesses are as good as yours on what it weighs so let's take a look and see what it does 29.76 carats 29 carats that's amazing that's a huge huge crystal with a beautiful color.

I'm very happy with that. and the smaller stones are about the same value per carrot, so let's put them all in the thing so there's another five carats in the smaller stones, so we're looking at probably three to four thousand dollars in the small stones and the big. one, so we're looking at about a sixty thousand dollar gem, what a beautiful, beautiful result. I'm happy with that, thanks for watching guys, see you next time. I know there was no dancing this time, but I'm over the moon. about this gem it is so beautiful I can't I can't believe it can you believe it I can't believe it