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Stones I have cut

Prospecting Australia

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Lefty said:
Dihusky said:
Wow :eek: :inlove: , that dances!!
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She sure does, especially seen moving :D

Though I think I should probably have chosen a paler bark/natural material background to allow the light pink to stand out more.
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Light pink :( looks a bit closer to smokey in colour, definitely think a different background is worth a try
 
I think a lot of them do have a slight "smoke" tone to them - some of them are what I'd probably call "dusky pink". Been going through them and found a few that are quite a strong shade of pink, just not sure how much I'll be able to retrieve from the rough.
 
Lefty said:
I think a lot of them do have a slight "smoke" tone to them - some of them are what I'd probably call "dusky pink". Been going through them and found a few that are quite a strong shade of pink, just not sure how much I'll be able to retrieve from the rough.
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Just found that 'rough' problem myself but with some Harts Range Garnet, real dark so cut it down on the saw to a 20ct starter and was lightening up nicely but real chrystaline and fragile. Got the pavilion finished and was looking good, then the girdle and a damn great crack right round the corner... threw the stone away, no point in wasting time continuing.

That said, first Garnet I've cut and loved working with it, polish was amazing, just lit up on the dop.

Oh well, that's cutting, now for a 24ct dark pink piece of Ruby... :)
 
Yeah, you have to go over them carefully - Harts range zircon rough tends to run larger (often much larger) than zircon rough from elsewhere in Australia but a high percentage are fractured. I often rub them back on the cabbing machine, at 3000 resin-bonded wheel finish you can easily get a nice, clear view into the stone and cut away the flaws. Never had a problem with one once all the inclusions were eliminated.

The zircons from Harts range regularly display the crystal shape at least partially while the ones from the rest of Australia usually seem to look more smoothed and weathered and are often without the same sort of cracks, though are usually smaller. Might be that they've been weathered and tumbled a lot longer and anything that was going to fracture has already done so, while (perhaps?) the Mud Tank stones might have weathered out of the host rock relatively recently? You see this same difference with the Topaz from Mount Gibson being still in it's crystal shape while the topaz from Mount Surprise further down the road typically looks a lot more smoothed and rounded.
 
Big rough zircons, both over 200 carats each. They aren't gem quality, though I suspect at least one of them has at least a small stone hiding inside.

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In the crystal shape (this one about 150 carats I think). It has a good sized section inside that looks relatively clean. It llooks hazy in the photo but I think there's a good clean stone in there. Won't get anything remotely like 1/3 of the original rough weight :D once I saw it up into pieces to get rid of the cracks. But I think it will still be an easily worthwhile stone.

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I have, in my experience with topaz, found O'Brien's Ck/Mount Surprise topaz to cut like butter and have a yellow glow behind the light that returns; Tasmanian NE topaz cuts like steel and at times has a purple haze in it; Killiecrankie topaz cuts like shiller and is generally weak in refraction even though it appears bright. That NE corner stuff is the best I have ever come across and a gemmologist told me he considers it to be the best in the world.
 
Pat Hogen said:
Not so sure about the backdrops fellas. Now this is an opinion only, not a criticism, but I remember my father telling me that do not let the backdrop take away the intention of the subject. He was a photographer with his own studio when he was in his twenties.
What this means is people tend to study aspects of the backdrop and mentally drift from the subject of the photo, in this case it is our stones that we are presenting.

Very recently purchased a Nikon D5200 and a 105 mm micro/macro lens. Now the fun begins! (so much to learn about this camera, getting mental indigestion)
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The D5200 is a great camera in low light, I have some epic photos at nighttime from it.
 
Thanks Diggit, I will experiment at low light times when I get back to base. I did notice that a shot of a rising moon associating with Venus came out quite respectably, the camera handled the lack of light quite well. I wonder how that will equate with gemstone photography, in low light settings?
 
Cheers Sandta :D There's probably a good day's work in something like that.
 
Rockhunter62 said:
How did you get the number 7 into the desigh Lefty? :lol:

Cheers

Doug
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It wasn't easy :D

This design has a tendency to show "lightning bolt" reflection patterns. I do wonder how it would look in a high RI stone, I think the patterns would likely be different.
 
Just Beautiful ...

One day when the penny are saved I will buy one just like it,

You do amazing work on them Lefty

Goody :)
 
Cheers Goody :)

You won't need too many pennies, I won't be asking that much for it.
 
Thanks Goody :) I've priced it the same as I would ask for amethyst in the for sale section :Y:
 

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