Check out this piece of Zambian rough I picked up yesterday. Sorry about the fuzzy pics I was trying to hold it on the white paper while trying to shoot photos. Lights behind and above stone at 45 degree angle
7.8 grams
I have a friend who is looking for some good JXR cutting rough to have some stones cut for his wife and I happened to mention the zambian material has a fantastic blue component and a color that is hard to rival and he said he might be interested in some as well. I picked this up yesterday and was going to pass it along to him but after trying to grade it under not so ideal circumstances and thinking it was the biggest and best of the batch I looked through I snatched it up. When I got home yesterday I used my lighting and loupes and my at home techniques for grading rough and I realized it had 2 other flaws that I didn't catch when I bought it. I knew it had one that would take away about a 1/3 of the stone but once I got home and under my normal setup I spotted 2 flaws which make it a non-cutter(they are flaws and not just feathers or inclusions).
I am going back next weekend to trade it out for some others and I will have my setup with me next time....he has smaller ones that are good cutters this just happened to be the largest and cleanest I could see at the time. This came from that same batch of material I sold like 2 years ago if you remember them. One of my best sellers on ebay...
Good lookin' stuff there Barrett! I got a couple of pieces from that same batch you are talkin' about and it's some super good stuff. I had George Ellis cut a pair of these for some ear-rings and they came out fantastic with a very strong blue component to them. Glad to see there are still a few available out of that batch.
Barrett, how do we find you on eBay? I'd love to find rough with blue flash like that and have it cut...if you can't post that, can you message me over at Diamondbistro, I am the same name there than I am here.