160 carat rough opal cut an unbelievable gem. Totally unexpected

Good morning and welcome to Black Opal Direct. My name is Justin. Well he was going to cut a nice big piece of

opal

on the machines and he was going to talk about the asmr side of things just by listening to the grinding sounds, but what? What happened was this really big

rough

piece of

opal

that I thought wouldn't cut much has cut something beautiful so I changed it a little bit and you can enjoy the whole process of watching this

rough

knot become beautiful so look this. When I initially inspected this opal with the flashlight, it seemed like there was only a small chance that anything would be clean.

It looked like sand had taken over the entire piece, but you really needed to open it up to be sure that the white cap on top was a good indication that there might be good color underneath, so polishing it was my first priority, but The sand everywhere had given me little hope, I would enjoy the hypnotic sound of the 120 grit aggressively removing excess white matrix. She's a catch-22. with sand and silica you can't have silica without sand to transport it and you can't have color without the cavities in the sand when the sand and silica mix you get an opal like this if that makes any sense a lot of people say why not you use a dremel to get the sand out and although I could, I think a smooth surface, a nice dome, is always worth more than a curved surface with holes.

This 120 grit wheel is so rough that it can sometimes throw chips or fragments of opal into my eyes, so when you get closer to getting all the sand out, it is advisable to switch to a final wheel and you can start with the final wheel earlier if you're not quite sure about cutting ovals, it's very nice. Switching to the final wheel once you've removed most of the inclusions, the sound of the finer diamonds removing all the rough scratches from the previous wheel is very satisfying. You know, I never expected this rough sandy knot to be as clean as it is inside.

It seems that I have not found gold, but opal again. I think I'm on a winning streak so I thought about should I cut it off or should I leave it as a nice big piece and you know what, not a lot of big knots. This cleans so well that I have decided to leave the thing rough on one side and polished on the other, turning it into an amazing necklace piece or a dream of a wire wrap, and so the process continues by grinding this piece with increasingly more abrasives. fine. To get the end result of a beautiful full polish at this stage, it is very important to constantly dry the stone and check the surface to see where the scratches are and the final parts that you need to remove before polishing.

I use my forearm or a towel to dry the stone, but it is imperative that you do this, otherwise you won't know if you've done a good job. This 1200 grit nova wheel is the loudest wheel I have and it's funny that it sounds so loud. like it's removing a lot of opal, but it's actually removing the least amount and giving it a nice pre-polish, getting ready for the cerium oxide shhh, a couple of finishing touches on the 1200 grit and I'm ready for my favorite part of polishing. a large piece like the one I have you need a lot of water in the felt wheel because with a large stone pushing quite hard you can burn the stone quite easily so you need lots and lots of water and cerium.

I've used this felt wheel for years and created grooves from smaller stones, so the only place to polish this large piece is in the center where there is a flat surface. If I try to polish it on the grooved areas, I will also put grooves in the opal to make it safer. be in the center, so it's okay, so I made a lyre with myself. You can use the grooved areas, but you really have to move it quite a bit to avoid creating grooves in your opal.