Wavey tiger eye

Was given this among a bag of rocks, nice ruffled and folded fibres create an interesting 3-d effect as it moves....



Took it up to a #3000 resin-bonded cabbing wheel, it was easy to work and didn't get little pits and chips as tiger eye often does. Finished with cerium oxide on a soft lap on the faceting machine.

Very Nice Lefty, You certainly know what you are doing

Captn

Nice cab Lefty, looks sensational.

Very nice

Cheers everyone

There was a chunk of the same stuff as well. I sawed a slice off it, that was good. Sawed another slice - and then after that, the rest of the chunk just turns into regular, straight-banded tiger eye. Bugger!

This was actually the first time I had used cerium on the stuff. The few bits I had done before had little pits in the surface that packed full of the white tin oxide powder that I had tried to polish it with, leaving a white-speckled surface. I had even rubbed it with a cake of soap to fill the pits and keep out the oxide but to no avail. But this stuff didn't get those little bits pulling out of the surface, possibly because the wavy shape of the fibres made them harder to pull out than straight ones.

You can't really see it in the photo but the cerium put a nice, liquid-looking polish on it. I was told recently that zirconium oxide is often a lot faster for polishing macro-crystalline quartz (ie, quartz crystals) but that cerium is still the best for micro/cryptocrystalline quartz such as agate and tiger eye.

Beautiful stuff Lefty.
Have you ever tried an epoxy to fill pits?
I have some bolder opal I have been having trouble with pits, got some opticon to try out, will let you know how it goes.

shivan said:

Beautiful stuff Lefty.
Have you ever tried an epoxy to fill pits?
I have some bolder opal I have been having trouble with pits, got some opticon to try out, will let you know how it goes.

Click to expand...

I've never tried opticon Shivan, I think it would work applied just before the polishing stage. I'll be interested to hear how it goes.

Cheers

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