Fighting an endless low grade cold. Need to get the leaves up before they kill the grass that I paid a premium to water in the near drought that hit my area.
fun fun fun
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Came across a how-to video rental site on
Instapundit --
SmartFlixIt is super cool!
Many how-to videos on many different subjects. What stood out to me is that in the
jewelry making section they have all of Alan Revere's goldsmithing videos. I had seen those videos on
Revere's website but decided to put them off as they go for $50-$70 each. But one can rent them from SmartFlix for $10.
Nice.
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I came across
TeraPeak a couple weeks back. Started to research cabochon sales and hit some facts that forced me to rethink some things.
I decided to find what material sold well as cabs and compare that to the price of rough.
Well agate, jasper, opal, ruby, sapphire, emerald, as well as transparent material that is normally faceted.
The cabbed faceting material (especially spessartine) really threw me off. But after not finding any cab rough in that material of decent size, I could only assume that faceters were just trying to recoup some money on pebbles in a parcel. Buying facet grade rough to cab would be foolish.
This leads to agate and jasper. What really sells in those materials are fancy shapes and real interesting patterns. Real interesting patterns tend to show up in costly rough. At this point I'm not prepared to lay out large sums for rough that I have not proven myself on. As for the fancy shapes, I'm not interested in cabbing in and of itself. I'm cabbing to #1 make nice things for my daughter and #2 make things to sell in order to buy faceting equipment. I view learning to make fancy shapes that are better than what the commercial houses are putting out as a diversion to my near-end goal of faceting.
Then there is opal. Opal looks to be a good money maker. However, the real good cab material comes from Australia. In order compensate for the large shipping cost, I'd need to buy a large parcel. Most dealers recommend $50-100. Again, I'm not prepared to lay out large sums for rough that I have not proven myself on. I've seen smaller parcels offered by vendors in the US and Canada, but their parcels are smaller and for around the same price. I think I will come back to opal if it is taking a while to work up the money to get the faceting equipment.
Emerald does well as cabs. The best cabs look to have been cut from facet grade parcels. I've seen what looks to be OK cabbing grade emerald, but there is a lot of very low grade rough out there.
That leaves ruby and sapphire. All the materials mentioned above are in items selling for under $2, but for some reason sapphire cabs are nearly all under $2 (at least from the 30 day free info from terapeak). I don't understand why that is but it is. Large ruby cabs (8ct and above) look to sell for $10-$25. Looking at corundum rough, there is a great deal of low grade material as well. In poking around I found some rough that would make two 10mm ovals or rounds for about $10.
So, if I want to enter the market cheaply ruby looks like the way to go. However, if I can get a $20-50 return on an $10 outlay for around two hours of work -- I'm looking at $5-20/hr.
(Forgot to mention that jade is another low cost entry material that performs about as well as ruby for the same cost in rough)
Considering that doing more than five stones a day burns me out quick, that doesn't look like the best plan.
This had me questioning my stance of only buying the faceting equipment through the sells of cabs. My original thought along those lines was that I don't need yet another expensive piece of equipment that I've lost interest in. I want to prove to myself that my interest, time, and money are being well spent.
But, I started looking around on terapeak for faceted stones. Well, just like in cabbing, better rough and larger 5+mm end stones give a better return.
So, jump right in and spend a ton of money on rough? When I have no idea if I can cut things people will buy?
No.
I have no past experience making money with hand skills. Yeah, I do little things around the house, but nothing proven.
So what to do?
Well, I had thought about goldsmithing and gem setting as something I'd do after I'm faceting. But I'm thinking I may start practicing with base metals now and then move into silver and gold.
I'm thinking this practice will allow me to avoid spending money on settings/findings and allow a greater return.
In the end, from what I read, I need to be able to get a 20-30% return. Bought settings and findings take away from that, but the additional labor of making the settings might not balance out.
Fascinating stuff.
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I think I'll rent
McCreight's video from smartflix.
I had been thinking about picking up his "
Complete Metalsmith, Professional Edition" but have held off due to a few of the excerpts I found. They seemed very brief. I later heard about the book he edited for Erhard Brepohl, "
Theory and Practice of Goldsmithing". Reviews of that book indicated that it covered the same ground as Complete Metalsmith as well as other areas. Also it was more in-depth.
I'm thinking the video will help me decide which book I want to go with.
As for working stones, my wife has bought a bunch of agate, jasper, and obsidian for me to cab as Christmas gifts. I'll play with the found stone until that arrives.
Starting in January sometime I think I'll start cabbing jade and ruby to sell. After I get around 100 feedback I'll start tossing star ruby into the mix.
To avoid burnout I'll try doing 2-3 stones a night. I'm thinking that should be few enough and I'll have a chance to test it out once the Christmas rough arrives.
