Very well explained as per usual. Really good to get a hang of the thin laser bars. The savings on rough can be huge just like carving only stones. The tougher the rough the cheaper the value BUT if you can get something out of it the margin can be much greater. Its also way more exciting and fun 😀
I’ve just watched this lesson for a second time, just as a reminder. It made perfect sense, and I will most likely watch it a few more times as reference. Great subject matter, especially for a rookie like myself. Thank you
Riley like you cutting thin seams is a trial by fire when you are learning to cut these stones. Thanks very much for sharing your method for cutting these. My cutting method is strikingly similar which makes me feel good with my cutting skills for these beautiful gems. Thank you for spending the time to put this RUclips together for us mate.
Awesome video Riley. Thank you for the attempt to comunicate your experience regarding expert level cutting. I myself just started cutting opals few months ago by hand for my own art-projects and taking my time to get a feel for the material before investing in machinery and it's realy nice for me to see an example of a place to wich my skills can grow to. Very inspirational at least for me. Wishes of love, peace, health and inspiration for you and your family and friends from Aachen Germany, Michael
Great video. I love how almost every lapidary uses different techniques for end results. I have a thin bar split grey base video coming out soon. I can't wait to get some of your material. I've been watching your stuff for a while. Thanks for sharing
As a toolmaker I can walk up to any wheel and tune myself to it, rather than the cutting to me. 20 years of working in thousands of a millimeter and using fine measuring equipment that go way beyond the caliper, I've developed the finesse for it. Plus, jumping from machine shop to machine shop over the years you have to learn every machine and its nuances on the spot. These are the skills I cant wait to bring to opal cutting.
These tools will serve you well. I find a lot of people that work with their hands for a living pick up the craft very quickly. Dentists, surgeons, etc. I did my apprenticeship as a carpenter so had some good skills there to start with but had to some some work to get my tolerances down to an acceptable range with opal!
The gem may not have turned out the way we wanted it to, but the lesson you put together and so graciously published for everyone is priceless. Especially when a guy makes an investment in rough like that and can literally, without some kind of reference, grind his money into dust in seconds. You can take it off, you cannot put it back on.
Brilliant Riley. With all depleting commodities, we need to use whatever is available, and while extremely challenging, I’m going to go back over some of my too hard stones and if any have a second chance. Hopefully fine vein rough opal will find a bigger market place.
I love the final results on that stone. So much information in this video and, as you so expertly pointed out, it is up to us to determine how our style affects the final stone. I have some stones with super thin bars like this, so I definitely have stuff to practice with and, like all things opal, you HAVE TO PRACTICE. lots and lots of practice.... happy late fathers day, Riley.
Riley, you can also 'zero' the calipers on the low point. Doing the math of how much material that needs to be removed from the high spot is automatically calculated for you. The diameter of a mechanical pencil lead can be used as your scalping guide thickness, examples of leads that I have on hand 0.89 mm, 0.56 mm. Good tip of how to sneak up on a thin color bar!!!
I started with material like this, sanded by hand. My thought then was that if I could do those bars, I could do any bar. To begin with, I stopped way to early on the rougher grits, so it took me hours on hours and my fingers was bleeding 😅 Now I work my way down to just above the bar on my hard wheels, 600 soft until I can glimt the bar from above, then 1200 to the point I'm satisfyed, finish of with 3000 and cerium oxide. I definitly think everyone should give these thin bars a go, as it will save them ct and give more depth to their bars on all other stones if they know where to change wheels 🤷♀️🙂 As allways, love your way of explaining things in your videos. There are no room for misunderstanding anything, and I'm sure nobody will fail if they follow every step 😊👌
Thanks Riley great tutorial it's a very cool way to make sure of a hit instead of missing due to wind change. I "get it" makes great sence to slow down and check the target and calibrate the scope. I got a lot out of what you said. It's an analytical way to higher chance of success with very thin bars. I love it cheers mate.
Yes it's a challenge to sometimes try and convey what your trying to explain to kids but they have time on there side to realise themselves. It was good tutorial as I was trying to explain to 2 of my boys about feel on the wheels and how much cut to come through to full colour of preference once colour is indicated. It's OK to say practice and experience but a young guy takes it as daunting. I seen it on there faces! Your tutorial gave me and analytical way to explain it and they understood! Thanks mate 👍 I appreciate 🙏.
Hi! Thank you for sharing your expertise. It is fascinating to see how it's done and all of the pitfalls that can occur so quickly. I know you're in Australia, but you don't sound Australian. You sound American or Canadian to me. I'm not a jeweler I'm actually a silk painter, but your video popped up in my 'recommended' list and it sounded interesting. When I first read the title I imagined thin bars of opal would look like the mother-of-pearl veneer or the sheets of inlay, lol! Beautiful job and I wish you and Grace lots of luck finding the elusive black opal! God Bless 😊
@@nnOpals My husband is a Texan and I didn't associate your accent, or lack there of, with his, lol. Where in Australia are you living? I have been wanting to go to Sydney for many, many years because of the Grey-Headed Flying Foxes. I'm guessing that you have to go to the dryer areas in the outback to mine for opals? That is assuming you mine them, as well as dress 'em up? 🙂 In reference to accents, I have an interest in accents because of my background. I love to listen to certain accents and I could listen for hours without hearing what they're saying....lol! I don't have an accent even though I am from Biloxi, Mississippi. Everyone else in Mississippi whether North or South has an accent. I live in Lufkin, Texas now and everyone here has a strong accent, some more than others. The reason I lack an accent (some people have said I sound like I was raised in the military) is due to my early childhood. My first language was Cajun French and when I started in kindergarten I had to be put into tutoring to learn English. During this time I developed a stutter and I was put into speech therapy to get rid of the stutter. I spent most of my foundation education in speech therapy and this helped get rid of any possibility of an accent. I think Grace looks like she's a little character, lol!! I couldn't tell from the very short dialogue, but she sounds like she's got an Australian Accent. Anyway, 😊 good luck with you and Grace (your daughter?) finding the elusive Australian Black Opal! God Bless 😃
This is very detailed and helpful vid. great job thank you Riley. I just got your gem torch and i will test it when i receive it. Looking forward to it.
Amazing of you to share all this knowledge. thank you. Couldn’t have asked for a more clear, informative & interesting video on how to cut those thin bars ❤
Im a knife guy who is into opal. This is like putting an edge and deburring an expensive blade. At least you have your water wheels. The edge on knives can not be heated at all and needs to be done by hand on water stones, once the finish is done. One false move and I have to redo the finish again because of a little scratch. I spend hours polishing by hand because even with water, a powered grinder will send the edge into solution and mess up the temper. By changing the crystal structure of the steel at the edge. Which is less than a micron thick. I love when different industry methods overlap. Even sharpening by hand with out lubricant will burn the edge. Eventually, I want to get into lapping but I will need to expand my shop for that. But the tools are pretty similar. Im just fascinated by opals specifically and want to collect just to have. Super cool.
Very similar demons to deal with in this process. I worked for a time at Angle Swords in Texas, so have a good feel for what you are talking about here. Lots of room to use Opal in knife design, especially mosaic style inlay etc.
@@nnOpals yes. Thats what im going for. Inlay in japanese style wa handles. The fit and finish is everything in knife sales. Amazing channel and shop btw. Keep it up. I will be bidding on some rocks soon
I have a whole bunch of fantastic hand cut inlay material I am about to list up the the shop in the next week or so. Some blue, some green, some mid grade white and some high grade white. @@victorfranca85
When looking under that loupe/light device, what magnification do you recommend? I see x5, x8 and x10 advertised not sure which is best to view opal whole cutting.
Doing so would only decrease the value of the stone, and in a significant way. I've never had any reason to do that and cant imagine I ever would. Why would you bother?
I have tried and have never had much success at doing this way. The closes I got was using a large flat sanding disk on a Dremel head and that kind of worked but only if the bar was at least half a mm thick. Smaller than that and I could never take off material evenly enough to reveal the colour bar successfully. I think it is because you really have to plan your cut so that you start refining your grits before you see any colour and this is especially hard doing it by hand. I mean, if you really had a lot of time and wanted to do it by hand with wet/dry sand paper and the paper was backed on a hard surface, like steel block or granite tile, then yes I think it could be done but you would have to do a lot of experimenting before hand to get your depth measured just right. Also you would need to be very consistent in your pressure and technique which is easy on a flat lap but I find really hard by hand because your hand gets so tired and the longer you do it the harder it is to keep the pressure consistent.
@@nnOpals thank you for such a thorough reply, i really appreciate it. That's about as much as figured, im going to do a few practice pieces and then take a shot at it! I won't be in the position to get a machine until about 5 months from now so rather try my hand at it and see if i can make that timeline shorter ;). Thank you!
@@TooSmartNA a lot of new cutters start out with the high tech 8 slant lap. Very affordable way to get into opal cutting and if you want to upgrade to a full arbour you can always use it for cutting bars like this, or inlay/mosaic/doublet work. I'm an affiliate there so use code "53FROGS" will get you 10% off all non-machine items/supplies etc. hitechdiamond.com/collections/lap-machines?aff=192
@@TooSmartNA Absolutely, anything you can cut with a big arbour you can cut on this slant. You can even do things on it that you cant do well with a big professional machine. The one negative is that it is not a production machine, so if you want to cut many thousands of opals on it I think it would be a bit cumbersome, but hundreds would be well within its capabilities.
Excellent video Riley. Thanks!
This is the most technical opal cutting video I have witnessed.
Thank you for the love of opal
Many thanks Neil!
I love learning at the feet of a Master. I am in awe of your talent
I'm no master, just a guy that doesn't mind failing a whole lot to get where I am going. Idiot master maybe!
top top cheers mate you are a mine of information !! tks riley
Via RUclips, Opal Auctions and purchasing opals from 53frogs, you always give great advice on Opal cutting 👏 Great video Riley
Very well explained as per usual. Really good to get a hang of the thin laser bars.
The savings on rough can be huge just like carving only stones.
The tougher the rough the cheaper the value BUT if you can get something out of it the margin can be much greater.
Its also way more exciting and fun 😀
Thanks for sharing Riley, Ive learned a lot!
I’ve just watched this lesson for a second time, just as a reminder.
It made perfect sense, and I will most likely watch it a few more times as reference. Great subject matter, especially for a rookie like myself.
Thank you
Glad it was helpful!
Yea I agree totally, I'm a rookie too so information like this is priceless
As a complete beginner this video is amazing for detail & instruction.
Will brave the challenging stones as they come now!
Glad it was helpful!
I learned a lot and enjoyed the video. Thank you.
awesome video riley
Riley like you cutting thin seams is a trial by fire when you are learning to cut these stones. Thanks very much for sharing your method for cutting these. My cutting method is strikingly similar which makes me feel good with my cutting skills for these beautiful gems. Thank you for spending the time to put this RUclips together for us mate.
Awesome video Riley. Thank you for the attempt to comunicate your experience regarding expert level cutting.
I myself just started cutting opals few months ago by hand for my own art-projects and taking my time to get a feel for the material before investing in machinery
and it's realy nice for me to see an example of a place to wich my skills can grow to. Very inspirational at least for me.
Wishes of love, peace, health and inspiration for you and your family and friends
from Aachen Germany,
Michael
Thanks Riley. Great deminstration
Most welcome!
Well thought out. Key takeaway is learn your depth. It will help on other stones too. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for watching! yes, Very important to know your tools well.
Thanks for sharing this very informative tutorial. ✌🤠✌
Great video. I love how almost every lapidary uses different techniques for end results. I have a thin bar split grey base video coming out soon. I can't wait to get some of your material. I've been watching your stuff for a while. Thanks for sharing
@@nnOpals Thank you I'm honored. I had no idea you and Don were from Texas.
Awesome, thanks for sharing your hard earned knowledge!
Thank you!
As a toolmaker I can walk up to any wheel and tune myself to it, rather than the cutting to me. 20 years of working in thousands of a millimeter and using fine measuring equipment that go way beyond the caliper, I've developed the finesse for it. Plus, jumping from machine shop to machine shop over the years you have to learn every machine and its nuances on the spot. These are the skills I cant wait to bring to opal cutting.
These tools will serve you well. I find a lot of people that work with their hands for a living pick up the craft very quickly. Dentists, surgeons, etc. I did my apprenticeship as a carpenter so had some good skills there to start with but had to some some work to get my tolerances down to an acceptable range with opal!
Absolutely excellent video Riley! Priceless information. Thank you for all you do.
The gem may not have turned out the way we wanted it to, but the lesson you put together and so graciously published for everyone is priceless. Especially when a guy makes an investment in rough like that and can literally, without some kind of reference, grind his money into dust in seconds.
You can take it off, you cannot put it back on.
Brilliant Riley. With all depleting commodities, we need to use whatever is available, and while extremely challenging, I’m going to go back over some of my too hard stones and if any have a second chance. Hopefully fine vein rough opal will find a bigger market place.
Thank You very much for the Great Information of your years of Experience and Great Video
God Bless You and Your Family
Most welcome, thanks for your support!
I love the final results on that stone. So much information in this video and, as you so expertly pointed out, it is up to us to determine how our style affects the final stone. I have some stones with super thin bars like this, so I definitely have stuff to practice with and, like all things opal, you HAVE TO PRACTICE. lots and lots of practice....
happy late fathers day, Riley.
Very informative video. Thank you.
Riley, you can also 'zero' the calipers on the low point. Doing the math of how much material that needs to be removed from the high spot is automatically calculated for you. The diameter of a mechanical pencil lead can be used as your scalping guide thickness, examples of leads that I have on hand 0.89 mm, 0.56 mm. Good tip of how to sneak up on a thin color bar!!!
I started with material like this, sanded by hand. My thought then was that if I could do those bars, I could do any bar. To begin with, I stopped way to early on the rougher grits, so it took me hours on hours and my fingers was bleeding 😅
Now I work my way down to just above the bar on my hard wheels, 600 soft until I can glimt the bar from above, then 1200 to the point I'm satisfyed, finish of with 3000 and cerium oxide.
I definitly think everyone should give these thin bars a go, as it will save them ct and give more depth to their bars on all other stones if they know where to change wheels 🤷♀️🙂
As allways, love your way of explaining things in your videos. There are no room for misunderstanding anything, and I'm sure nobody will fail if they follow every step 😊👌
Thanks Riley great tutorial it's a very cool way to make sure of a hit instead of missing due to wind change. I "get it" makes great sence to slow down and check the target and calibrate the scope. I got a lot out of what you said. It's an analytical way to higher chance of success with very thin bars. I love it cheers mate.
Yes it's a challenge to sometimes try and convey what your trying to explain to kids but they have time on there side to realise themselves.
It was good tutorial as I was trying to explain to 2 of my boys about feel on the wheels and how much cut to come through to full colour of preference once colour is indicated. It's OK to say practice and experience but a young guy takes it as daunting. I seen it on there faces! Your tutorial gave me and analytical way to explain it and they understood! Thanks mate 👍 I appreciate 🙏.
Thanks for the knowledge 🤘😁
Hi! Thank you for sharing your expertise. It is fascinating to see how it's done and all of the pitfalls that can occur so quickly.
I know you're in Australia, but you don't sound Australian. You sound American or Canadian to me.
I'm not a jeweler I'm actually a silk painter, but your video popped up in my 'recommended' list and it sounded interesting.
When I first read the title I imagined thin bars of opal would look like the mother-of-pearl veneer or the sheets of inlay, lol!
Beautiful job and I wish you and Grace lots of luck finding the elusive black opal! God Bless 😊
@@nnOpals My husband is a Texan and I didn't associate your accent, or lack there of, with his, lol.
Where in Australia are you living? I have been wanting to go to Sydney for many, many years because of the Grey-Headed Flying Foxes.
I'm guessing that you have to go to the dryer areas in the outback to mine for opals? That is assuming you mine them, as well as dress 'em up? 🙂
In reference to accents, I have an interest in accents because of my background. I love to listen to certain accents and I could listen for hours without hearing what they're saying....lol!
I don't have an accent even though I am from Biloxi, Mississippi. Everyone else in Mississippi whether North or South has an accent. I live in Lufkin, Texas now and everyone here has a strong accent, some more than others.
The reason I lack an accent (some people have said I sound like I was raised in the military) is due to my early childhood. My first language was Cajun French and when I started in kindergarten I had to be put into tutoring to learn English. During this time I developed a stutter and I was put into speech therapy to get rid of the stutter. I spent most of my foundation education in speech therapy and this helped get rid of any possibility of an accent.
I think Grace looks like she's a little character, lol!! I couldn't tell from the very short dialogue, but she sounds like she's got an Australian Accent.
Anyway, 😊 good luck with you and Grace (your daughter?) finding the elusive Australian Black Opal!
God Bless 😃
Nice. Thanks for the tips
This is very detailed and helpful vid. great job thank you Riley. I just got your gem torch and i will test it when i receive it. Looking forward to it.
Many thanks for the kind words :)
Amazing of you to share all this knowledge. thank you. Couldn’t have asked for a more clear, informative & interesting video on how to cut those thin bars ❤
Thank you
Most welcome!
Im a knife guy who is into opal. This is like putting an edge and deburring an expensive blade. At least you have your water wheels. The edge on knives can not be heated at all and needs to be done by hand on water stones, once the finish is done. One false move and I have to redo the finish again because of a little scratch. I spend hours polishing by hand because even with water, a powered grinder will send the edge into solution and mess up the temper. By changing the crystal structure of the steel at the edge. Which is less than a micron thick. I love when different industry methods overlap. Even sharpening by hand with out lubricant will burn the edge. Eventually, I want to get into lapping but I will need to expand my shop for that. But the tools are pretty similar. Im just fascinated by opals specifically and want to collect just to have. Super cool.
Very similar demons to deal with in this process. I worked for a time at Angle Swords in Texas, so have a good feel for what you are talking about here. Lots of room to use Opal in knife design, especially mosaic style inlay etc.
@@nnOpals yes. Thats what im going for. Inlay in japanese style wa handles. The fit and finish is everything in knife sales. Amazing channel and shop btw. Keep it up. I will be bidding on some rocks soon
I have a whole bunch of fantastic hand cut inlay material I am about to list up the the shop in the next week or so. Some blue, some green, some mid grade white and some high grade white. @@victorfranca85
Ill pay attention.thanks
Some footage for you here to have a peek
vimeo.com/893267716 happy to chat about a wholesale deal if you are interested in volume. @@victorfranca85
What made you opt for the Lortone unit? Great education video.
Thanks a lot man, that will help out. ¦-)
Great video. But, hey mate, theres still enough beef to go through 🤪
Thanks for the vid good work 34:08
Glad you enjoyed it
@@nnOpals the art of grinding money away..ha
Hello, do youhave a video about treating opal?
When looking under that loupe/light device, what magnification do you recommend? I see x5, x8 and x10 advertised not sure which is best to view opal whole cutting.
Have you ever put a piece of glass or crystal on the top of a flat stone like that.. ? A reversed doublet of sorts?
Doing so would only decrease the value of the stone, and in a significant way. I've never had any reason to do that and cant imagine I ever would. Why would you bother?
@@nnOpals for a higher dome
The Higher dome only increases the value marginally but the making into a doublet decreases the value significantly. @@jeremiahmcafee3816
Do you think this could be done in the same way by hand with some finesse?
I have tried and have never had much success at doing this way. The closes I got was using a large flat sanding disk on a Dremel head and that kind of worked but only if the bar was at least half a mm thick. Smaller than that and I could never take off material evenly enough to reveal the colour bar successfully. I think it is because you really have to plan your cut so that you start refining your grits before you see any colour and this is especially hard doing it by hand. I mean, if you really had a lot of time and wanted to do it by hand with wet/dry sand paper and the paper was backed on a hard surface, like steel block or granite tile, then yes I think it could be done but you would have to do a lot of experimenting before hand to get your depth measured just right. Also you would need to be very consistent in your pressure and technique which is easy on a flat lap but I find really hard by hand because your hand gets so tired and the longer you do it the harder it is to keep the pressure consistent.
@@nnOpals thank you for such a thorough reply, i really appreciate it. That's about as much as figured, im going to do a few practice pieces and then take a shot at it! I won't be in the position to get a machine until about 5 months from now so rather try my hand at it and see if i can make that timeline shorter ;). Thank you!
@@TooSmartNA a lot of new cutters start out with the high tech 8 slant lap. Very affordable way to get into opal cutting and if you want to upgrade to a full arbour you can always use it for cutting bars like this, or inlay/mosaic/doublet work. I'm an affiliate there so use code "53FROGS" will get you 10% off all non-machine items/supplies etc. hitechdiamond.com/collections/lap-machines?aff=192
@@nnOpals would this be suitable for all types of Opal cutting as well? I didn’t really know about this option tbh, thanks!
@@TooSmartNA Absolutely, anything you can cut with a big arbour you can cut on this slant. You can even do things on it that you cant do well with a big professional machine. The one negative is that it is not a production machine, so if you want to cut many thousands of opals on it I think it would be a bit cumbersome, but hundreds would be well within its capabilities.