I got the velvet and here's an example with my 40watt lamp in close-
I attempted a few pics with two lamps on the stone but multiple lights killed the blue flash. It was strange. I could see the blue but the camera didn't pick it up.
So I picked up a lamp and some 75watt bulbs.
Here's an example with the lamp in close --
And one in the photobox (sorry about the blurring) -
The photobox pic needs a much stronger lamp.
At this point I checked out terapeak and confirmed the main three price groups.
For the past 30days:
- $0.01-1.99 -- generally no flash and near solid color
- $2-5.00 -- a great deal of silk and some flash
- $5-203.99 -- strong blue with the top prices going for clarity and size
All of the above pics are of the same stone.
My current issue is that I need to repolish all of them.
As I said, when my head gets bad, detail work suffers. I noticed scratches on all of the stones in my pics. They really show up in bright light and magnification.
But such polishing is something I know I can do. So things aren't so bad... just moving much slower than I'd like.
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Ok, my head is feeling a bit better.
Going to do a few before pics and then repolish.
16x8mm can be seen above.
13x10mm --
15x9mm --
16x9mm --
14x12mm --
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First attempted to repolish on the 14K grit. Based on how slow it went I decided to try going back to the 600 grit.
The 600 grit gives a matte polish and the 1200 grit gives the beginning of the mirror polish. That matte polish hides scratches that the loupe doesn't show (or that I couldn't see). I'm thinking I should have only gone back to the 1200 grit. In working the stones tonight I'm starting to think I need a 800-900 grit step because the 600 to 1200 grit just moves too slow.
