Whoops! This poor fire opal was victim to my (numerous) mistakes
Whoops! This poor fire opal was victim to my (numerous) mistakes
You can more easily see my mistakes in this video. There's two chips and several of my meet points don't actually meet. Even with these mistakes the "fire" of this fire opal is still incredible, and I look forward to cutting more of it in the future. #lapidary #faceting #gemcutting
Fire opal, 0.335 carats, Princess Trilliant by A. Collins
This tiny beauty has quite a few mistakes in it, if you look past the pretty sparkles.
As soon as I started cutting the crown, the thing flew off my dop and clear across the room! The landing caused some minor chips on the pavilion, one of which is extremely obvious in the video.
I did my best trying to realign the thing but it took several attempts, and even with my best effort it was not quite right. My girdle is not level, and several of my meet points don't actually meet.
I wanted to share this one so any other newbs or aspiring faceters don't feel intimidated by all of our beautiful cuts - we make mistakes too! Sometimes many of them all at once, and we spend hours coming up with as many curse words as we can think of while we're trying to fix them! But even this dumpster fire turned out rather pretty, all things considered. :)
And when I say this thing is tiny, I really mean it. American penny for scale:
Is this something you would still sell or is it just to low quality for you to do that?
I would definitely not sell this one. Between the tiny size and the terrible cut, it's not even worth a few dollars. I cut for fun though, I'm really not good enough to sell since I just began faceting a few months ago, so I'm not upset at its worthlessness. My goal was to learn what cutting fire opal was like and I certainly did learn a lot with this one!
I honestly hate cutting small stones… they are so easy to screw up royally.
Still looks good!
I hate them for the same reason, but I also love them because they cut so fast! Patience is a virtue I do not have in abundance, but I'm definitely learning to have more of it with this hobby.
I have several stones with wandering girdles - this still looks great regardless!