Round

Tourmaline Trouble

In mid-November I was doing a show in Ventura during terrible weather. As a result of the storm, attendance was very low, the parking lot was a lake, the room was cold and the roof of the fairgrounds building leaked right by my space.

On the second day, things were a little better and we had someone looking at the tourmalines. I noticed that one of them looked “funny” — like maybe some lint had gotten under the glass lid of the  box. Not too many minutes later, the customer had left and my daughter called my attention to the same stone. Unfortunately, it wasn’t lint. There was an ugly fracture running across the stone.

The stone had been fine initially.  There were no “feathers” or other inclusions visible.  It had not been taken out of the box and dropped. The stone had both pink and a bit of green — not enough or in the right places to be an obvious bicolor. But it seems the stone decided it was time to split the colors.

Fall Back Time

This weekend we go through the ritual of turning back the clocks.  But only an hour.  If only we could turn back whole calendar pages, it would be much more useful.  My list of things to do for 2023 would have a better chance of having more items crossed off.

It seems that much of my gem related activity this year has been struggling with things I thought I had previously resolved.  Stones seemed to resist polishing.  And when it came to getting photographs, they were about a cooperative as a toddler posing for the holiday picture.

So now at the end of the year, I am finally getting around to faceting some of the tourmalines I purchased in Tucson back in February — February 2020 as well as February 2023.  So here are a few of the latest “off the dop”.

This is a little 1.06 carat chrome tourmaline (6.4 mm.) Just a lovely shade of green. (One that the digital camera liked as well.)

Next is a 2.58 carat light peachy tourmaline, 8.1 mm. across which has concave facets on both pavilion and crown.  The rough was bicolor, pink towards one end and light green at the other.  However, the green end was  not deep and was heavily included and cracked. I had thought that all of the green was being cut away in the process of getting the piece clean.  Apparently enough green was left so that there is a hint of green around the edge of the stone.

Here is another slightly darker peachy tourmaline with concave facets on both pavilion and crown. It is 3.26 carats and 8.9 mm. in diameter.  No green in this one.

 

And finally, a fairly traditional square green tourmaline.  It is 2.56 carats and 8.9 mm, across.  Of course I didn’t notice the lint captured on the upper facets until I was processing the photo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Experiment with photos

Photographing faceted gems has continued to frustrate me. I find it hard to get the camera to see what I see, especially the sparkle of the stones. Perhaps the only way to do that is with video where the reflections of the light change as the stone turns.

Anyway, yesterday, I conducted an experiment with my fairly new Pixel 6 cell phone. Most of the photos were pretty poor. I didn’t have the phone set in a tripod and would need more time than allotted to figure out the best positioning of stone, phone and lighting. But a couple of shots did surprise me with nice detailing of the facets and color.

First is a 2.58 carat peridot, cut in an 8 mm. octagon shape. The characteristic black disc shaped inclusion shows clearly in the photo. When the stone is held in hand it has such great sparkle that the inclusion is hard to find.

The second photo is of a 1.89 carat orange garnet. The color is very close to that of some “Madeira” citrines I had just cut as well.

 

 

Been a while

It has been quite a while since I posted what I have been cutting. The whole pandemic thing left me unable to feel the level of creativity required to give the larger and more expensive rough the attention it needed. So I ended up cutting left overs from parcels purchased by mail order from the back of Lapidary Journal back when I was just starting to facet. Most were small and included, and my photography skills are lacking. My camera only seems to capture the interior features and not the sparkle, especially with the smaller stones.

Now I am to the point of getting back to the newer and nicer rough. There were only a few pieces left from my 2019 Tucson visit. This 3.36 carat aquamarine cut as a blunt end marquis was from some old stock that John Garsow was offering. It is 15.4 mm. long and 7.0 mm. wide.

I just love the granny apple green of the Arizona peridots. I always am on the lookout for affordable nice pieces of rough. This 2.30 carat, 8.0 mm. round was from the pieces I picked up during my 2020 Tucson adventures.

Next is a pretty pink tourmaline from a parcel found at the 2020 Tucson Faceter’s Symposium. It came in at 2.51 carats, 8.4 mm.

Finally prasiolite quartz with concave facets on the pavilion. I’ll skip the part where being out of practice with the fantasy machine, there was an unfortunate incident requiring the pavilion to be completely recut. The fantasy machine is not forgiving when one’s attention slips. Fortunately, the rough was sufficiently deep, that the only loss was my time and my pride. The stone ended up as 11.6 mm., 7.08 carats.

 

 

A Few African Garnets

Garnets are generally one of my favorite stones to facet. Usually they cooperate and take a nice polish without fighting back.  Sometimes they end up a bit too dark — a classic red that won’t sparkle.  Sometimes there are fine needle inclusions that make for a sleepy look to the stone.  Often they can contain interesting inclusions that are easily visible while the stone is on the dop and being examined with magnification but when finished, the inclusions are not a detriment to the overall appearance of the stone.  So while I was in Tucson, I could not resist picking up a few parcels of small African garnets.  As a balance to the larger (time consuming) pieces I was cutting using the fantasy machine, I dopped up a few of these for quick positive reinforcement.

This is a 1.30 carat garnet from Malawi which is 5.5 mm. across.  There is quite a color range in the stones coming from this region.  This stone tends towards the orangish side.

Next is another Malawi garnet which is has a purple red color.  It is 7.8 mm. in diameter and is 1.64 carats.

Even more purple this garnet from Umba region of Tanzania is 1.56 carats and 6.7 mm.

Like the Malawi garnets, the Umba garnets also have a wide range of color.  This orangish red one is 1.06 carats and 6.0 mm. across.

Another parcel was labeled “Ruvu River” which is also in Tanzania.  This slightly purplish garnet is 1.02 carats, 5.8 mm.