My first amethyst cut

[Firelyte]

Hello everyone, I''ve been reading this board for a couple weeks now, but haven''t posted until today. I just wanted to stop by and show you my first experience in getting a gemstone cut.

Lately I have once again become interested in rock hounding and collecting gemstones. I found I did this quite a bit when I was younger but haven''t found the time since college. Now that I have a bit more money, I''ve begun collecting again, and after spending hours every night researching on gemology I found I haven''t even begun to learn!

I stumbled onto this site while looking for a gem cutter and I read Wink''s post about Richard Homer. After a bit of research here and on several other sites, I found his work to be amazing! After contacting him (and telling him that I heard of him through Wink), he took a look at an amethyst I had purchased througn thaigem.com and returned what you see below.

I was initially disappointed with the purchase from thaigem.com, but after looking over the stone I saw I wasn''t ripped off nor was it as bad as I origionally thought. From the angle of the photo they had on their site the stone did in fact look exactly like what I got, but from most other angles the rich purple color was more of a crystal clear stone with a little purple in the termination. It just wasn''t a very good rough for display purposes. Buyer beware!

The second image is of the stone Richard cut for me, it''s half the size of the origional rough,(I was expecting smaller from all the zoning), but it''s thousand times more impressive than I ever thought! Richard''s cutting is amazing! ANd well worth the cost.

I was looking to start a collection of heirloom quality gems to pass down through my family... I think I''m off to a good start!

Now to look for a better place to buy rough gems from. Any suggestions?

Jon

 

[strmrdr]

awesome

 

[cflutist]

Wow that's absolutely beautiful. I am seriously considering having Richard re-cut a 3.05 "native cut" (meaning lousy) blue sapphire for me and your results give me hope that there can be some fire from that stone.

 

[lotus]

Firelyte,

I've been trying to start a gem and diamond collection myself and have so far failed quite miserably, been ripped off everywhere. But I've never dared to do what you just did i.e. buy rough and have it cut. And that's a great idea! But is it really very expensive (could you give me an idea of the price range) to have someone cut a rough and is there any minimum size, quality etc for the rough to be purchased for cutting?

Thanks in advance.

 

[valeria101]

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On 9/3/2004 10:02:58 AM lotus wrote:



...I've never dared to do what you just did i.e. buy rough and have it cut. And that's a great idea!
----------------

Well, this is not the easiest think to do. It is even easier to get badly ripped off buying rough! You may want to take a look a THIS thread... it gives a pretty good idea about what the issues are.

On the other hand, custom cut gems (meaning precission or unusual cutting and carving) are definitely attractive. It is safer to let the cutter source the rough and pay for their expertise in the process. Given that jewelry with such gems incorporated is not a usual find at all, it seems (to me at least) that it does pay to source your own gemstones and designs.

Besides, the hunt is just as nice as the catch here: if you have not looked into modern gem cutting as yet, than I am quite jalous on the exciting experience ahead.

No need to exagerate with this like me - it's just among the nicest hobbies, I would think

 

[Firelyte]

Lotus, you can go to all sorts of places online to find rough stones, just do a search for "rough gems" in google. I'm not sure who all is reputable.

As for cutting, there are cutters everywhere, might be worth your time to find a local cutter and show him your rough and ask what he/she thinks of it and what it's potential is. I sent Richard my rough and he gave me a rundown of it's potential and a rough price based on the size. I have no doubt that if I had a better quality stone it would have cost more as the size of the end result would have been larger. The 18 ct amethyst above has 72 concave cuts in it's pavallion. Smaller stones (like 4 ct and smaller) will be much cheaper to cut than this one was. As for price, this one cost several hundred to cut due to the size.

The hunt is turning out to be challanging and fun, I'm looking forward to my next vacation. I'm planning on visiting a mine to see what all I can get straight from the source.

I origionally thought of buying my own rough stones and getting them cut from a post I read on another site, I heard the cost was significantly less than paying thousands of dollars in a jewlery store... which, to be honest, kept me from even trying to collect any precious stones.

Thanks for all of your replies!

 

[yowahking]

Lotus, I have helped hundreds of people start a gem collection. First suggestion is to stay away from bargain lots. The hook is so interesting because you will get a bunch of stones for such a little amount of money. You will find very quickly that you will either give most of them away or put them in a fish tank. The world will never run out of cheap gems so you can get them any time you want. Besides the internet and TV, most jewelers have a stash of "dead" inventory that they will sell for pennies on the dollar just to get rid of them. I just sold a few hundred aqua's to another store for 1/10 my cost just because I was sick of looking at the bag that was the left overs from a buy 10 years ago. Search for either your favorite color or an unusual color for that gem. For instance, if you love a deep green, look at Russian Diopside, Tsavorite, Chrome Tourmaline, etc. Or if you like sapphire, find one that changes color or is two tone like part purple and part orange. If these are intersting to you now, you will still find them intersting as you collection grows. It is fairly easy to find a general price range for gems (1ct diopside from $20-80 per ct) and then judge whether it is a nice one or not. Finding a great appraiser helps although colored gem pricing varies much more than diamonds and metals. Good deals are everywhere, sometimes in the very spot as bad deals. If an appraiser or a gem savy jeweler likes your stone, that is a good sign. Some stones like Tanzanite jump all over the place in price from year to year. Some like color change garnet are increasing steadily at about 20% per year. Does not mean that prices will not drop if another deposit is found, also does not mean that prices will triple in a year if supply drops off. Buy what you love, try to get a good price, beauty sells better than rare, rare and beautiful is usually expensive, but not always. Any gems you get sick of, send to me.

 

[valeria101]

There are not too many places to go if you happen to like cabs and beads made of facet-worthy or unusual material. Nothing serious, but asking for unusual appealing rough made lots of sense and fun to me.

There are just a few places I take a look at online. Maybe you'd like them too

Faceters (and sister site, cabbers.com)
Minedirect (newsletters are much better than the site itself).
Mineralminers (occasional impressibe rough gets listed, but direct contact works best)
Selectgemslimited
Premiergemdesign (incredible chalcedony carved, cabbed or faceted on order, and Wyoming jade).

 

[valeria101]

Not sure what is left to say about these

surely like the color allot.

 

[luvmysparklies]

Wow Firelyte! The cut of that stone is amazing, it looks like ripples or ocean waves on the edges and starbursts in the middle. I went to Winks site and fell in love with a 25.72 ct amethyst that I have got to get. I wanna make a pendant out of it. He's having a "blue stone special" so my poor charge card is crying "the blues" so to speak!
Luv

PS: What do you plan to do with the stone? Are you going to set it or just enjoy it loose?

 

[WinkHPD]

Thanks for the kind words Sparklies. If you thought the picture was nice, wait until you see the stone on Tuesday.

Firelyte,

Richard Homer is able to source loose for you as well as cut it. Unlike the medium to poor quality rough that he was able to salvage for you, he will help you find top quality rough, then when you have something cut it will be incredible!

Wink

 

[Firelyte]

Excellent links valeria! And I'm liking those stones you posted.

luvmysparklies, I think I'm going to leave this stone loose. I wou;dn't know where to begin on setting it in anything... and there is something about having it loose... so shiny...

Thanks for the tip Wink! I've been hunting for another amethyst for Richard to cut. I think I really want a brazilian blue/purple trillian cut and think I see some potential on faceters.com. I'll contact him and see what we can work out.

Does anyone know of any good displays/storage methods for a loose gem collection? I would like to have something that I can fold up and store in a safe deposit box and open up and display them when I need/want to.

 

[lohmdgn]

Hmmmmmmm not that interested in rocks but i need imformation about it, can u post ur imformation is more good form, reluctlently I am doing this mineral project and this is very hard to get imformation in the internet, try to get to a libary is taking time, so tell me Why gems are so shiny, and where do they come from? please reply

thxs

respond as possible i need this tomorrow

 

[lohmdgn]

Can u tell me why rubys are shiny and where do they come from valerie I like the rubys, lets see if u know why they are shuny and where do they come from


Shiny and nice cutted gems reply as possible

nice gems

 

[lohmdgn]

nice rocks man but i got white gold better than urs i see iam a business men well working hard i see i sell these to some people for a lot of money



but nice rocks i see

Good Job repley to three messages of bottom

 

[NyssaLynne]

Gorgeous amethyst pic. I can imagine the real thing will be amazing.

I have purchased gems from Thaigem twice before, once I was satified and once not as much. However mine were cut stones. They have excellent customer service if you don''t mind going to the effort of contacting them. If this is the only time you have purchased from them, you should consider giving them another chance. Especially since you ended up with a fantastic cut stone from your rough.

 

[WinkHPD]

Firelyte,

Have you done any more buying since you started this thread? If you want to see litterally tons of rough the Tucson Gem show is in early February.

Although the main show is only open to members of the trade there are dozens of side shows where you can go and see great material. Much of it is overpriced, especially at the public shows, but some of the best bargains in rough are found there too.

If you want to play, Tucson is the place! Plan on several days, you litterally can not see all there is to see, even with a week.

Wink

 

[Addlepated]

I just sent Richard Homer some money for him to find me a nice color change garnet rough in Tucson, and cut it for me. I''ve been wanting one of these stones for a couple of years now! Can''t wait to see what happens next.