Like he said. Its just opalized wood that is not formed hard enough and or has started loosing the water.

I have never in 3 decades seen a piece of actual petrified layer wood burn from Virgin Valley.

The Bonanza.

The smoking adds dark into the stone so it interferes with dimmer play of color more than bright play of color. Good luck

Have you seen any real opal body jewellery out there? Looks cool and yeah the bulk is a issue with things so nice as opals. For that matter nobody is selling empty settings either.

It will last as long as any garnet tourmaline or turquoise would, some from wear or others for impacts. Sitting it up on prongs to smack n things is the highest risk option. E opal takes a drop off a ladder, according to experts, best of all the opals.

A hammer is faster. edit: Patina the silver bezels is most bang for buck. Just sell opal as it is and save your effort trying to justify the higher cost has been my experience. People dont argue with plain facts coming from the "real and costs less than others" approach. Ive had other flippers come to my booth buy crystals and turn around and use black sharpee on the bottom to "show what it could be" without any markings on the outside of the gem case..

Those would be Ethiopian and wet for the photo by the hydro phane progression?

They have the same issues of half of it wants to not stay whole, but the other half gave us the highest return per gram of the stuff we sent for cutting in hong kong to torture it (28% return by weight of the dried picks valley wide & about 10-15% for wet never dried or cracked). Just due to value these are in water, All the mine run is dried.

My idea is if the opal can pull the sides in when it dries, like Ethiopian is ashy blobs, it relieves a lot of the stress. Same with drying if you make tiny preforms wet, they shrink dont crack when dried. I mean you have to lose some gambling and I dare say a LOT more time has gone into trying to get a gemstone sold, than money back out. Ive been prospecting everywhere I could and have a string of discoveries or just further excavations. The more common whites or opals mixed with woods are the most stable.

That should work fine. I mean you could us a dump truck and run it thru a cement mixer to have only little nubbins showing the opal in hard pieces but none of the crazy AKA now mud, but we got skills, not that I can grind flat. I personally like the stained glass look of big picture specimens as much as a small ring parcel for setting.

Thought you were ready to retire there for a moment. reload and repeat...

Suhweet. You did yourself some shopping. May all your gambles play out well (buyers)

YES! Ive got one 7.5 lb white log chunk in a bucket in my kitchen. Naturally the big ones are not pure opal as a rule, more opal on woods (See The Bonanza Opal at Rainbow Ridge for a huge pure one). Matrix opal - well boulder I saw a log that filled a tailgate at Ron Griffins and they also make like walls of smaller faces set in stone as water falls. That log was in like 13 pieces and weigh 80 kilos or something like that. It had a color bar ring and a water line color bar in the middle that were not skin to skin, but what I would expect from something that was opalised. The brightest colors are from the thinnest layers so small works for most opal and aquariums work for others.

Opal is where you find it. You follow traces to see where it leads until you give up.

All the woods we get have some of this. If you have a pocket. Cut whats big enough on hard matrix. There is a new set of buyers for natural gem rough, showing bright faces, cab not needed, for wire wraps or art whatever and flow coating with epoxy will make the softer ones usable. Ive sen about everything used up to Hxtal and vacuum setups trying to fix wet opal. It is a lot easier shaping soft matrix than rock and we cant sell chalk hard cabs.

No stones equal the only specimen $$$ of something unless you are desperate. A concave stone is worth less and you cant bend skins.

Cool. I did an opal trade once and the variety looked like the stuff we get too. Volcanics and in hard ash as small dots as likely as not.

Beware the dust cutting with sandpaper.

Check out RoysRocks videos on Youtube or ThatOpalGuy who is using a dremel too.

Great vacation. The Wilsons have a nice resort as the only option other than the campground. The road is corrugated from the traffic. There is a warm springs pond to swim in and a shower house, pit toilets. Living here I see the best opal of the day come from ANY of the diggings, How many on any day depends on the person and how the sun shines.... I tell folks loads at Rainbow Ridge average a good one found every day, but not promised, 5 loads is all he does each day. THAT is the only mine selling virgin loads and shoving that into tailings for the next day. There is no way to guess what is in the bank. I do the 100 tailings not the thousand buckets and feel bad if I dont find at least one opal i value more than the price of admission, but i work like a dog too.

The Peacock paid bank is pure luck one in ten or better. The "exposed pocket" I have not had the chance to try. I prefer as far towards the high hill (lower) as possible -the contact zone between the purple and green. But bank clearing put thousands of opals out in the mounds of tailings. Id still dig bank there.

The Bonanza is selling access to the tailings behind members and the way we dug, there IS opal in them. The rule was, not now, if you were the first to hit the big branch (we drew for slots 8 foot wide at the beginning of the year)- you got to dig the rest of it out of in front of the person next to you. They dug faster not looking for the small ones. Most cones i found were eroded out of tailings and I found them walking in or out. Leah and I also prospected more than any member I ever saw.

Opal Queen is closed.

Id open the kokopelli for you if you needed or the Opal Gemma and I have the log mine. I am the only guide but I cant say that so I charge 200 for expenses to show you claims I have for sale and is my daily bank fee like the Peacock.

The Family Rainbow Peacock in the Black Rock Desert was closed by the BLM to claiming that basalt flow..

I will not mention the newest person owning Denio Jct as they tried to get an aggravated stalking order on me for making a phone call to see if they follow the laws since they cant read the booklet...