Cloudy covering amazing colors

[Craig]

Hello all, just Craig here. I was digging through some opal that I purchased quite sometime back. I'm not even certain where it's from other than Australia lol. It's one of the nicest opals I've ever cut, except it has a cloud over the top of some extremely bright color with a nice dark grey background.

my question is
Is there a way to tell if it's going to come out or not? I'm starting to get a little bit thin on the stone. I still have a bit of a dome but not a lot. It's a fairly flat stone to start with but these colors make me want to chase it. I just don't have any experience really with a stone worth.as much as this stone would be if clear
. Any feedback would be helpful. Thanks to everyone in advance

[SwordfishMining]

Hiya Craig & Welcome. I cant say I have much experience with Australian rough, but with opal in general; All I could think of was to illuminate it with a bright light, like the Gemfish Black Opal Direct sells, or another bright, small aperture light like faceting gem lights.
See if you can estimate how deep it goes and if flattening it off would work or if the potch goes thru with the color. I would expect is a microscopic lightening or darkening, or how clear looking and equal the light is under it across the stone.
Problem with color is once its gone its gone. When its on the bottom of the skin all round against the matrix, you have to make half of it go away to see thru to the other bright skin from the inside. More a vein in wood problem I know. I want to just run a saw thru the deep potch and get the max return out of Ethiopian opal even if it is 8 times as many stones & I have even less experience with that.
. Good luck.

[PinkDiamond]

Hi Craig and welcome to the forum. That's a lovely opal and I hope you can use John's tips to figure out what's in there. Maybe some others will also have tips for you, but I'm sorry to have to say that I haven't cut enough of it to be able to help. Keep us posted and show us the results if you change it, and again, welcome to the forum.

[Craig]

Thank you. Swordfish and Pink diamond for giving me a little bit information. I maybe didn't state what I meant. Clearly it's not a super thin color bar. It is on one edge only but I'm just losing a lot of weight by sanding on this gem
I spent most of last night cleaning it up as much as I could but it's not going to come clear but it does look a lot better than it did I think
Wish I would have known about this forum 6 years ago when I first started cutting I would just watch black Opal direct and Pulitzer opal and try to emulate what they were doing.
Still love running across something like this that I don't know. All the years I've got in and this one is kinda new.
Ive seen it on cheap stones. I' chased it and just didn't care and didn't think about it, but when it's a stone that's between 8 and 12 grand according to that opal appraising link I found somewhere on this forum that makes it a whole new experience. Happy I found you guys. You'll be hearing from me again and again. I imagine.

[PinkDiamond]

Good, I'm looking forward to having more cutters on the forum again. Y'all inspire the rest of us, and you can see that the opal has improved so what you've done to it was definitely worthwhile.

[SwordfishMining]

The veil does take some away from it, but that is a killer stone you did.

[PinkDiamond]

I almost forgot to tell you you're through the screening process so your posts will now load on the forum immediately, you can send PM's (personal messages), and you have full access to the forum.

[OpalSpectrum]

in my opinion the best way is to cut 1 big perfect oval and 2nd small stone

don't get me wrong but the appraising sites are not really accurate and good way to value opal

note that the body tone is light and has milky potch in the face - which devalue it and isn't really looking nice - which mean most people will not pay high price for it --- and it doesn't matter what the 'appraising site' say
in this case free-shape isn't best way because more carats don't make it more valuable !

it looks like the inside is darker then the back so if you decide to cut the oval try to remove all the 'light' parts on the sides and 'hide it' > this way it will 'look' darker from the front (or when set in bezel)

and there is still quite a bit of color to make medium dome
I'm not sure if it will be worth 8-12k but high value top gem for sure

hope this helps

[Craig]

Thank you for the response opalspectrum
I have gone and done exactly as you showed and another long-time opal cutter described pretty much the exactly the same. It turned out all right and it's a good thing. I didn't try to chase the veil off the face because I cut it and it was solid potch between the the two stones only cut the larger one of two as I have fat fingers and hate doing small stones LOL. But here's a picture of the final product. Thank you all who've responded, I appreciate it

[PinkDiamond]

That came out very nice Craig. Although I couldn't answer your question I was hoping you'd show us the result, and it's impressive, even in a photo so good job.