Virgin Valley N1 Black Opal Limb Cast - unique color pattern, need help

[Shea_O]

Most diggers dont sell their honey comb. It looks like barred fire or flickering flames from the sides too. It happens in volcanic opal but not in the sedimentary Australians. I call it plume play of fire or a plume garden when they are packed like blades of grass in a clearer opal and you can see all around them. (See Opal Negras Magnifica video at you tube)

It sounds then that what I’m calling honeycomb is unusual enough that the diggers prefer to keep it, right?

This stone was dried for a year and was stable with only that tiny chip I mentioned last month on an edge. And that edge was in the semi-crystal rind. Since cutting (and during) I looked closely with a 10x loupe and see no cracks anywhere. The rind had deep clay on the domed part, hence the odd shape to get it all out.

Is it worth making this kind of black opal “ideally uniform”? It would be more pleasing to the eye if it were uniform, but it breaks my heart to grind it away

[PinkDiamond]

That black hole packs a lot of color in there, and I like the way you displayed it moving the light around. What a beauty! I would take John's advice since he's our expert on opals from NV. Hope it all works out perfectly.

[SwordfishMining]

Sorry, I forgot it was dry already. As far as cutting. The plume play of fire is the most valuable unless you got a Harlequin, but plume is our equivalent. Nobody has ever made a pattern guide for here, they just always tried to fit us into from there with what matches. I've saved my best dry blacks for carving to keep the biggest size or decide how to slice it then stopped digging them until I got somebody I trusted to do something with it all. My sales of mines has slowed due to the truth of the matter I guess, not the lack of the opal dirt. I have polished around break faces more than once to make a settable Baroque gemstone & never tried/could make a calibrated size. Due to the rarity of the material should multiply what it is worth and get custom jewelers work anyway. Since we get so little dry, i never just grind it away to compete with all the people who will say its worthless and undercut you with their not the same stuff. There was so much opal found in Australia, because they actually tunneled and looked in the layers it is formed in, not just where it was exposed and has been picked up I might add. Sales are so, special shall we say, I was spending my time chasing the Glory Hole on a new cut and copper/silver.

[Shea_O]

Sorry, I forgot it was dry already. As far as cutting. The plume play of fire is the most valuable unless you got a Harlequin, but plume is our equivalent. Nobody has ever made a pattern guide for here, they just always tried to fit us into from there with what matches. I've saved my best dry blacks for carving to keep the biggest size or decide how to slice it then stopped digging them until I got somebody I trusted to do something with it all. My sales of mines has slowed due to the truth of the matter I guess, not the lack of the opal dirt. I have polished around break faces more than once to make a settable Baroque gemstone & never tried/could make a calibrated size. Due to the rarity of the material should multiply what it is worth and get custom jewelers work anyway. Since we get so little dry, i never just grind it away to compete with all the people who will say its worthless and undercut you with their not the same stuff. There was so much opal found in Australia, because they actually tunneled and looked in the layers it is formed in, not just where it was exposed and has been picked up I might add. Sales are so, special shall we say, I was spending my time chasing the Glory Hole on a new cut and copper/silver.

Wow John, thank you for sharing so much knowledge... I’m stunned.. that... I got so lucky.. Honeycomb/plume is the rarest/most valuable it sounds... I haveI talked to Chris Wentzell of the Dominion mine and he says he gets his good blacks appraised. Now I wonder how this POC pattern will have an affect on that? I’m glad to get the chance to hear your opinion too. I could see this is as being rare.. so few people handle it properly too..often starting the moment it’s exposed out of the clay...

I remember watching a TV special of some kind on the VV and this old fella found a nice opalized log and had put in the freezer in his RV to get it home (probably sat in there for a day or two at least) and of course it ended up annihilated.

I have even talked to many individuals who own and run businesses selling lapidary/gemstones/jewelry and have been very surprised at the lack of knowledge regarding opals. Let alone VV opals. The few people who have had experience cutting VV always had very bad things to say about it and when I started asking them questions in a roundabout manner - to get them to divulge techniques to me - I was shocked at some of the things they were doing to their opals. The worst case was one of them putting their opals into an acetone bath to dissolve the CA they used as a dop, instead of dop wax or something else. That immediately disspelled any measure of knowledge about VV opals this individual claimed to have.. No offense to him, and he runs an honest business and is a good guy - but this is exactly the reason so little of the VV opal can realize its full potential - even in the hands of a person cutting gemstones professionally for decades.

I believe the supposed “90%-95% of VV opals can’t be made into jewelry/are unstable” is an assessment that is quite inflated simply due to human mishandling. I think we may never know what portion of VV opals can realize jewelry potential. I for one am constantly doing experiments and I have a process that I am continuing to develop that I have used to success to stabilize VV opals in the matter of a week or two’s timespan.

Now I’m doing the opal dance inside my head haha

EDIT: This is a video of the same stone dry about 5-6 months ago. (Still had the clay rind)

[SwordfishMining]

So nice the claimjumper who dedicates a web page called Dominion Gem to lying about me and our mining district from prison gave you a name of an appraiser for Virgin Valley black opals.... Warning. Do not trust him or anybody associated with him directly despite the lies he will tell you about being competent or experienced. I dont ever want to hear his name again until he stops slandering and libeling me OK?

[Shea_O]

So nice the claimjumper who dedicates a web page called Dominion Gem to lying about me and our mining district from prison gave you a name of an appraiser for Virgin Valley black opals.... Warning. Do not trust him or anybody associated with him directly despite the lies he will tell you about being competent or experienced. I dont ever want to hear his name again until he stops slandering and libeling me OK?

This one or two response conversation with him was over a year ago on a separate forum, right after I had gone on my first trip to the VV. I made a thread asking anyone if they could give me as assessment of the value of what I had found and he replied with some info - and nobody by name was mentioned. I wasn’t given any names for appraisals. At the time I was still fairly new and didn’t know nearly as many people as I do now. I was reaching out to the mindat forum for info and he was one of the respondants.

I am currently dead in the water as one of the belts on my Genie snapped, one in the compressor/spritzer pump. Can’t cut until the replacements arrive

[PinkDiamond]

Bummer! Be sure to order two in case it happens again.

[SwordfishMining]

No worries. I seem to remember that now. Its just the attacks never end from that one if you read between the lines. The belts do like going after a bit and my spitter has been an issue lately. A flow thru can be better but it has to be drained. I rebuilt it with the pump kit more than once over the decades, but the belt slipping can be an issue after a while cutting. I've wished for an appraiser for the thru the roof items more than once, but what i seem to find short of the auctions returns is just for the common stuff about anybody can do from charts and guides. The grading is the most essential part. Then you can undercut you competition with confidence...to maintain a market share. We dont have to worry about that. We just have to worry about being rewarded for what they are getting fairly instead of slandered into loss leaders.

[Shea_O]

Newest video of the last chunk, that was dry for a year and now being cut and finished. Check it around the 1:30 mark... Just absolutely stunning isn't it? It has taken a lot of work, learning a lot along the way to get this stone to this point. Over a year process so far and at least one more ahead

[PinkDiamond]

Looking good, Shea. What shape will you make it, freeform or oval? It looks like it's wedge shape at the moment, and it looks like a really good one, so good luck with it.