Gave another try at opal polishing...

[Nabbosa]

Good afternoon opalholics

I tried my hands again at polishing.
So I won a nice welo opal for 24$ some time ago. It was very bright and had some beautiful vibrant bars, but only the smaller sides were shown:

I will also place the link of the auction for a video: https://www.opalauctions.com/products/5 ... gh-1416864

So I got myself 100, 600, 1200 grit sandpaper and some cerium oxide, and this is the result: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/aRyPSf1n6zs



I took the video in my kitchen no weird super bright led lightnings or anything like that. I think it looks pretty good.

Also, I decided to polish only one side and not the other, so that I have a "darker" side so that colours look better. Not sure about that, tho.

Let me know what you think
-Michele

[SwordfishMining]

I like it. Very attractive pattern to the play of color in the short. So many opals have to have the matrix left on one side to look good. (see hundreds of lightning ridge opals) I leave it backed by wood if I can instead of just crystal. The old boys always bezel set them in patinaed settings to help the flash. "pure natural". I thought i saw flashes of scratches, You may want to go 3000 or more before polishing. I seemed to get flats at the higher grits on the wheels tho. I just remember all those commercial cabs Ive seen that the scratches are right there under the cerium glaze and obvious at an angle. True Virgin Valley can be heat sensitive and does not like a tin glass burned on the easy way. But then again not all thunder eggs like a Richardson's high speed grinder.

[PinkDiamond]

Very nice Michele! You did a good job on it, and there's no law that says you have to polish the back of a cabbed stone. I embedded your video for you since you have it on YT, and if you look at your link versus what I put between the YT brackets you'll see that only the actual number of the video is needed to embed them here.

So what will you do with the stone, anything? I really like it so thanks for sharing it with us.

[Nabbosa]

Hey! Thanks to you both
I will definitely try with 3000 grit next time
I don't think I'll do anything with the stone, as I didn't shape it. It was just for fun

[SwordfishMining]

Still cute, "think I saw" and need to work on again are two different things from here.