From the moment found to finished king stone, is this stone worth TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS???
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- čas přidán 25. 06. 2022
- In this video we find spectacular opalised shells as featured in our last video, progressing through to the painstaking decision to slice one for inlaid doublet pendants and cut the other into a classic solid crystal opal cabochon. It’s never easy as opal is as unpredictable as the vagary’s of ancient moisture. Fortunately we manage to eek in a beautiful stone in spite of some threatening inclusions and a rapidly diminishing super gem bar of colour across the top. All up, very happy with the finished result!
Hopefully we share a few useful tips for old school lapidary methods. Thanks for watching!
Please like and subscribe for more outback opal fever! - Komedie
The finished piece can be seen here! : www.opalauctions.com/products/the-queen-5-huge-203cts-flawless-gem-aust-solid-opal-14k-gold-pendant-1476708
Stunning. Thanks mate. Nice to see opal being cut without the drama!
Hey thanks for watching! I thought this piece was particularly worthy to record.
Excellent!
“World Class” is an understatement sir, that Gem is absolutely amazing.
Thank you for sharing it with us.
God Bless
Thanks again for watching guys! Apologies for the delayed response! The finished piece can be seen here: www.opalauctions.com/products/the-queen-5-huge-203cts-flawless-gem-aust-solid-opal-14k-gold-pendant-1476708
Good job - very very nicely done.
Thank you! And thanks for watching! 🙏😁
Wonder Jobs
So nicely done n nice piece...
Beautiful stone
Nice.
Cheers, Thanks for watching!
great opal
Thank you Sir!
Must be heartbreaking to find a stone like this then have to grind away 20/30% to make it sellable. Beautiful stone.
Yes and no! What is heartbreaking is when you expect a beautiful gem and find flaws or cracks that just wreck it. This one actually had an extremely high yield! Most opal cutting wastes up to 70%! So yes that can be disheartening, but it’s what must happen to make a gem..
Thanks again for watching mate!
Absolutely a gorgeous stone i hope to see more videos from you. i am extremely hooked on opals they are #1 in my book. and hopefully someday i will be able to a come to Australia to mine for them and most importantly learn everything i can from you guys.
Thank you! You are not alone hey, opal is very addictive! I think I was hooked at about age 12 or 13, certainly at 13 after I used to ride my bike about 7km out to the New Field which was exploding with activity in the mid 80’s. I found a Belemnite pipe that was the most crystal clear and super bright opal I think I’ve ever seen.. Hooked me for life!
What a journey mate, great vid, great craftsmanship.
Thank you! Too good not to share when they come out like this! Much appreciated 🙏
A good trick is using super glue, cheap and works well, to un-stick your opal you just leave it in water for a few hours and it just falls off the stick 👍
Love opal, decent video. You've got a new subscriber from Washington state.
Maybe get in touch with Justin from Black Opal Direct for some pointers on future vids.
Beautiful solid opal cabochon. Some shell collectors may not have been too happy to see you chop up the other shell but I understand the slices are going to make some lovely pendants, which may be easier to sell and may generate more income than the shell. Well done.
I agree it’s a shame! If we knew of any collectors that would pay even approaching what the opal is worth in jewellery, less materials, labour and marketing etc, we would never do such a thing, only that seems to be virtually impossible. Can’t wait to be in a position to be ideological about these thing!
Having said that, we have ‘donated’ some real stunners to the SA museum under the cultural gifts tax offset scheme. (They weren’t ideal for slicing) haha..
@@Opaldigger How do you slice those perfect slabs?
@@michaelmacgeorge1082 Sorry ate, I just saw this, this is actually the work of Shannon @kimberleyopal czcams.com/channels/JzObADIsXZG8NcKkeVl27A.htmlfeatured he has a sliding slicer, has got down well hey!
@@Opaldigger Thanks!
very awesome result. how long did you spend in the mine, before you found it?
About an hour and a half! I wont mention the other 895 mines i spent years in and never found much lol, It was quite miraculous really.
Thanks for sharing. Did you go from 1000 grit to cerium oxide?
Yes mate, 600,1000, cerium oxide. That’s my standard for gems, I have occasional gone just 600 straight to cerium for cheap doublets and it’s still a commercial finish just not the same pop.
How can I buy that opal ?
If you would like to send us a message at worldclassopal@gmail.com we can discuss it!
Stunning, don’t drop it…..
I would never… 😂
I like the video overall, enough to offer some ideas to improve the viewer experience. May I suggest you occasionally slow down from time lapse during cutting and refining, not just between cuts when you show results. The constantly jittering video makes it hard to appreciate the transformation of the stone as it happens. It also gets a little irritating to watch over an extended period. I realize you are trying to compress a very long process, and switching back and forth between time-lapse and real-time is more labor intensive. I wonder if you could reduce the run-time of the video with a little bit of editing where you cut out those periods where the refinements you are making are very small. In other words, perhaps it's not necessary to show every second of the process. All just suggestions, of course. Keep up the great work.
My sincere thanks for both watching and for your analysis! I was thinking many of the same things but this is my first attempt at a ‘proper’ cutting video. I think I get impatient with the editing process. I am looking forward to doing just as you say and slowing the important detail and skipping past the more ‘boring’ refinements. I’ll possibly leave editing for a few days and come back to it fresh to refine the experience without the impatience! Thanks again for watching!
Do the expensive stones like this this sell or is it harder? that is a great stone and you should be very proud of your work, you did a great job and we all enjoyed watching it. The amount of times I have been looking at a stone then dropping it, lucky none have broken yet.
Thanks for your kind comments mate!
Haha, yeah luckily it was only carpet so it survived but I can’t say I’ve broken many stones at all over the years, I find good opal is pretty tough. I did snap a lovely pipe in half on the polisher once and was so traumatised I have been uber careful ever since!
As far as selling expensive stones goes, we usually stick to setting them as it’s easier to get a good price for the final piece. But this one I reckon we will keep loose for a while and if there’s not enough interest we will set with gold and diamonds to aim at the retail investor/ buyer. I would also say that the difficulty selling high value stones is a big part of the reason we slice material like the big shell in this video, this way we break the opal down into saleable pieces like the pendant in this video, still great value at a thousands bucks or more and usually sell within a year of listing.
Thanks again for watching!
It is white opal so no, it is not worth $20k. It is pretty, but that doesn't make up for what it is. Now if it was a dark opal or black, the story would be different.
values are based in beauty, while generally speaking white based opal is cheaper than other kinds of opal, make no mistake good top shelf opal fetches good dollars, the stone will fetch top dollars once it is set in either 18ct or 22ct yellow gold, ive sold a few over the years and sincerely believe that it would fetch 27 to $31,000.00 as a finished product, remember its natures art at its best,
well done my friend i see that our teaching by Stewart Jackson @ coober pedy TAFE has certainly paid dividends in your case lol. and what a stunning result..IMHO it is worth every cent of $20,000
Haha thanks Andoss! Yep they were fun days indeed. It’s such a rare place and time to be in Coober Pedy in those days where there was actual ‘regional development’ programs for people who wanted to be in the business. The govt should be actively promoting these kinds of things but alas they seem to want to shut it all down. We will keep going as long as we can! We will stick to our guns on this one I reckon, they’re just way too rare to give away,