When faced with a whopping 137ct nobby opal, my eyes pour over the rough gem to visualize the multitude of possible outcomes.Where does the best color seem to be sitting?Is there a better pattern u...
Win, Lose or Draw — Welcome to the World of Opal! Even after decades of buying and cutting opal, I can still get it really wrong. But that is the risk you take when you work with Opal. The highs an...
Jaymin Sullivan of the Young Guns Opal Hunters (from the Outback Opal Hunters) happened to drop by my workshop. With him, he brought one of the best rough opal pieces they have ever found while ...
Opal Nobby number 1 has the potential to cut a nice gem. It shows that rare red-blue color across the nobby, however, the sand is going to be an issue. SPOILER ALERT: If this one cuts well, there m...
The age-old question is, is bigger better? Sometimes the larger pieces of rough opal aren’t as straightforward as one thinks. A lot of thought goes into the execution of such a large piece of seam ...
October is almost here, or as others may know it, Opal Month! If you are lucky enough to be born in October you would know that your birthstone is the opulent opal, lucky you! What is Opal — Austr...
Here we are, nobby opal number 5 or ‘broken nobby’ as we have nicknamed it! What we already know about nobby number 5. It is a broken-off piece, so we can clearly see the color bar inside. We can ...
Father and son are at it again, this time Saxon is learning to cut colored rough. Saxon’s last learning session saw him cutting and polishing a piece of potch. Having graduated from that lesson, we...
The number 2 nobby was Justin’s pick of the entire bunch. There is great hope for this particular nobby, it has an exceptionally thick color bar compared to most. To take advantage of how thick thi...