Stones I have cut

Nice one there Dihusky, looks like you're going to have some fun with that :Y:

Yeah, plenty of stones can have inclusions and still be valuable - and it is also evidence that they are likely natural stone. Sapphires and rubies definately still worth $$$ with a few inclusions. And of course, real natural emeralds are hardly every crack-free. Pyralspite-type garnets are not nearly as scarce though - if the inclusion was in a less prominent spot I wouldn't be so worried but it's just under the surface of the table so quite visible to the naked eye at some viewing angles.

3.1 carat rose garnet, cut in Jeff Graham's "Gram Princess", a modified version of the original Princess cut. The body colour is an intense red but it shows some orange tints.

That's a beauty mate. :Y:

Beautiful colour Lefty.
Mackka

Cheers guys :Y:

A bit hard to see the facets themselves in the photo - with my level of photographic skill, I can get the camera to accurately show the colour of a deep-coloured stone but not the surface detail at the same time.

I must learn how to upload youtube videos. I took a video of it turning on the platen of the machine and the reflection patterns are intriguing - kind of like watching moving parts in a machine,

Nice colours Lefty, are they Qld stones ?

Nice cut stone mate. Great colour as well. :Y:

Nice cut stone mate. Great colour as well.

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Cheers Pete.

Yep, I love that rich colour that they have.

Nice colours Lefty, are they Qld stones ?

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To be honest I'm not 100% certain Wally. The rough the first one was cut from came from a mate and I thought he said it was Australian (Fullarton river I think). The rough for the second was recently purchased from Glen Huntly. Not sure if you know him or of him but he's based in Sydney and he and Rough2cut know one another. He sells some of the best rough I have seen at gem shows. He was reccomending Rough2cut's laps to me, I said yes they are excellent and I already have a couple (I wouldn't mind getting a #600 as well but that might have to wait a bit now).

Here's another, cut in Akhavan's "Void Reaver". Finished a whisker under 3 carats.

Same stone....

That cut does the job good play of sparkle coming through the main facets there.

I havent met Glen yet but hear the same about his stone sourcing. I helped Rough2cut sinter fire a batch of laps he was working on the other day, interesting process and his passion shows through to the quality of his laps.

Your stones seem to be a little bit lighter than the only Australian garnet I have cut, keen to see how the others in the batch turn out. I know the sources of my stones have been mixed up as they came from a hobby digger who covered a lot of different places but I am keen to pick up some understanding of the characteristics of each region for road trip purposes later in life.

Yeah, the quality of all the garnets Glen had was excellent - really dark ones tend to be a waste of time. Pyropes and (Alamdines as well I believe) tend to be mostly a bit too dark in my experience - but there can be exceptions. I have dug large quantities of pyropes from a property in my region and many of them break your heart - when examined closely, quite a few are as clean as a whistle......but so dark that they might look magnificent when held to the blazing sun or halogen lamp but will just cut a stone that is essentially black with maybe a few tiny red flashes. Even when cut as small as half a carat.

But I have found a few exceptional ones among them that were signficantly less saturated and those few did cut fairly nice looking stones.

There are very likely deposits of high-quality garnets in Australia similar to some of what Glen supplies I would think (much of what is on the market at present probably comes from Africa) but has there ever been any significant commercial garnet mining operations in Australia? Gem garnets that is, industrial abrasive grade have been mined. They haven't historically been worth much but that seems to have changed a bit with clean, not-too-saturated rough of some kinds selling for about the same as rough zircon, more if they are of exceptional quality (and I'm not counting the bright green tsavorite garnet which can go for prices as high or higher than good sapphire ). I know some come from Hartz range near Alice Springs and some from Fullarton river near Cloncurry in north-west QLD. I've cut stones reputedly from both places that were a bit dark but I've also been told of and have seen videos of people digging up much better ones in both localities - bright red without being too dark ones from Hartz range and some at Fullarton river that were a definate pink - both looked like they would cut nice stones.

I think many of them probably have a base body colour that is red while showing other tints. When they facet, the light we see has to travel twice the depth of the stone to come back out and hit us in the eye so by that time the red is dominating - at least I guess that's the reason. You can still see the other colour if you look closely. I didn't take a photo of the Void Reaver cut rhodolite while it was still in the rough but it was red but with very definate pinkish-purple tones to it.

The Gram Princess cut rose garnet was red with pinkish orange tones to my eye - this was the rough stone....



And I have one of these peachy orange ones on the dop now, hope to start tonight. Again, look through the deepest part of the stone and it's red - though these ones are more pronounced in their non-red colours than the previous two.



This one is "the perfect shade of red" - to my eye at least



And I really hope this one retains significant amounts of this colour in the faceted stone.......

Beautiful stones Lefty and can't wait to see the end result.
Cheers
Mackka

Cheers Mackka - I'm chomping at the bit too :lol:

I hope I get to see some of that peach-orange in the one I hope to start this evening when it's finished. Was going to go for another Akhavan design - Fallen Star. I've done it before and it works great. But it doesn't return all that much volume and I can't really afford to just grind too much into swarf chasing a pre-conceived design.

Still thinking.....

Love the color of that bottom stone Lefty, looking forward to seeing that one in its finished state. Cheers

Cheers Manpa - it looks like amethyst!

Lefty said:

Cheers Mackka - I'm chomping at the bit too :lol:

I hope I get to see some of that peach-orange in the one I hope to start this evening when it's finished. Was going to go for another Akhavan design - Fallen Star. I've done it before and it works great. But it doesn't return all that much volume and I can't really afford to just grind too much into swarf chasing a pre-conceived design.

Still thinking.....

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Why go with a specific design, freestyle it, with that colour it would probably respond well to a step cut... see how the girdle falls into place and go from there

To be honest, I've not had a lot of success with freeforms . I've only done a few and they didn't really do it for me when they were finished. But all of them were quartz, with the higher RI of garnet, the results might be better.

No sure though if you mean something cut to fit the outline of the rough as closely as possibly to try and retain every last point of weight (asymmetrical) or to build a symmetrical design on the fly. Done the second one a few times and the results were better, even though it didn't fit the rough quite as neatly.

The reason I entertained the idea of that particular design is that the stone appeared roughly pentagonal already. But the more I look at it, the more I think a hexagon might be better.

I have an attractive, not over-complex hexagonal design in mind that I have already cut many times before, and which was designed specifically for that RI. Plus it has a fair bit more volume.

seen a few Fullerton river garnets during Gemfest. They were that mauve colour on your last photo there Lefty, they stopped of on their way from Darwin to Anakie.

ray

Gilly47 said:

seen a few Fullerton river garnets during Gemfest. They were that mauve colour on your last photo there Lefty, they stopped of on their way from Darwin to Anakie.

ray

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Yeah, thought that Fullarton river did produce some better stones than the few that I have handled that were supposed to have been from there. I cut one for a bloke a while back that he said was from there - but it was a deep maroon colour. Stone was a bit on the dark side but not too bad.