The ongoing saga of the moonstones

A few updates.

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
  

That shows I'm in the top bracket for most of the parcel. In looking at the pics of the top stones it was clear that a strong lamp at a distance was used. So I tried a few pics with the lamp farther away from the stone. Here's one -



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.

Might stop watching the forex markets

I've been trying to figure out a way to trade forex over a week to month time frame. Some trades come out spectacular... and the losses are just as huge.

I'm coming to the conclusion that forex is geared for day trading. At least for the small investor. The only way that I see long term trades working is with carry trades. And that does not look like it is for the small player.

I'm not sure if it is my ongoing headaches that are making it hard for me to see how to work forex, but at this point I'm going to stop following it and go back to watching/trading ETFs.

Considering that there are monetary, gold, and silver ETFs now I think I should be good.

Started on the good moonstone

As I mentioned in the update to the last forex post the weather has been hurting me. I've been trying to muddle through.

I won two auctions for some rhodochrosite that I'll be cutting soon.

In the meantime I cut the good moonstone I bought a while ago.

Because my head has been fogged for several weeks now I managed to forget to take pictures of each step.

Needless to say, moonstone is a bit of a pain. On first viewing it looked like I had a number of large stones in the parcel. However, to orient to the very nice blue flash, many stones had to be cut smaller. Around half were of a size that I went forward with. The rest would end up being very small. If the larger stones do well I'll cut and sell the small ones in a parcel.

I'll put up some pics of the finished moonstone in a bit.

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Well this is annoying. My lighting is much too weak. I couldn't get pics of the standout stones as the flash washed them out.

I managed a pic of them all here -



I'm feeling pretty lucky that I picked up as much blue flash as I did as I oriented for head on viewing.

Here is an example of the flash washout. It was much worse with the single stones.



I need a few strong lamps.

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Downloaded the manuals for my wife's camera and tried a few more things.

Still think I need to get the strong lamps. But the moonstone is tough on black (which shows the blue flash best). Any strong light makes the stones glow white and washes out the blue.

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I very much like how the polish came out. You can clearly see the inside of my photo box reflected in the stones. I polished down to 14K diamond grit.

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At my wife's suggestion I hunted around ebay for user groups and guides on photography focused on jewelry. I found a list of guides by a "camerajim" and tried a few of the things he pointed out.



I'm well pleased.

This was done outside of my photobox with only one lamp. I need to tinker a bit more but I think I may have a few ebay ready photos real soon.

Might also try the pic under water as that reduces glare as well.

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Yet another update -

Head is hurting near 2006 levels. Makes me leery of trying anything requiring attention.

Very concerning. Not at the point where I feel the need to go round to all the docs, but pretty close.

Think the temps recently going from 17 degrees to 80 in a few days time is what is causing the problem. It isn't much fun to have a built in barometer in one's head. No, not fun at all. Would rather be able to predict the weather with my knee.

Anyhow, in comparing my moonstone with what is out on terapeak it looks like they might go for far more than the $10-20 that I first thought. Considering my low feedback (30) it probably won't but it is still a possibility.

With that in mind, my wife suggested that the black foam I'm using could turn away the high ticket item buyers. She is going to pick up some matte black velvet and a tripod for me.

She is far kinder to me than I deserve.

That leaves my rhodochrosite. I may mark it out this week but my head's condition makes me a bit scared to cut it as it is such a soft rock.

Thing is I have no idea when the weather (pressure/temps) will settle out and come February, the juniper pollen will be in the air. So, right now, I may be better off than I will be in a month.

Just don't know.

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More thoughts on starting materials

Thought about what I'd start with some more.

Ruby rough is kinda spendy and good jade rough is hard to find.

I thought again on the price range I should start with. I wanted to keep it low at first because my ebay feedback is low but good. When such is the case and I have no brick-and-mortar to back me I can not risk high price items on ebay. The item will sell much lower than it should because potential buyers will move on past because they don't trust me.


But I think I aimed too low. I picked $10-20 and I think I can safely look in the $10-40 range.

That opens the door for new materials.

So, using both ebay searches and terapeak research on what sells as a cab and what has decently priced rough, I've decided to look at pietersite, jasper (ocean and any with good "pictures"), rhodochrosite (shows up in ebay as rhodocrosite quite often), and boulder opal.

I've mentioned in the past that I was spooked by the amount of jasper and agate sold as fancy cabs. Well I'm not positive, but, I think I may have been wrong. The fancy cabs do well but so do the plain ovals and rounds if they have good pictures/patterns.

I'm also doing research into making silver chains as they go well in that price range.

I'm seeing this more and more. Where the signals on the weekly chart are very good... after the fact.

As the price moves, signals are given that often reverse by mid-week. That is common with all signals but on a weekly chart there is much time lost. I'm also seeing where very good gains are being eaten up in the next entry.

What I've seen in this last batch is where the price reversed well under my limit. So if I reset my limits lower in the future I won't make the high returns that I'm after.

Hmmm.


EUR/USD - Moved stop on short 1.4612, stop 1.4600, limit 1.4105 and it limited out shortly thereafter. Profit diff 12.
GBP/USD - Watching.
AUD/USD - Watching.
USD/CAD - Stopped out on long 1.0021. Loss diff 255.
EUR/JPY - No change on long 164.42, stop 159.50.
GBP/JPY - No change on long 228.52, stop 222.80, limit 236.71.

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Update:

Temps that go from 15 degrees to 70 hurt my head. Been near worthless.

EUR/JPY - Stopped out long 164.42 on 12/31. Profit diff 42
GBP/JPY - Stopped out long 228.52 on 12/31. Loss diff -572

Learned a few things

Rounded bezel -
Trying to round it on the 220grit sanding step was not good enough. I'll try doing it on the 220grit grinding step in the same manner as rounding the peak of the dome in the 100grit grinding step.

Scratches -
In the cab books I saw mention of scratches and getting rid of the previous step's scratches before moving on. I had thought that I had not seen that until this batch. But that isn't the case. On a few of my found rocks I saw scratches show up at polishing that I thought came from me being sloppy and hitting the arbor nut.

After the scratches came up on the obsidian I decided that I'd use my loupe on the stone before moving on. I was surprised at how often they showed up. In most of the materials I was able to go back and work it out. But on a few (petrified wood mainly), further work made more scratches. In those cases I'd try to minimize the scratch and then work it out on the next grit.

1200 diamond grit -
It arrived just in time.

I found that it cut much slower than the tripoli but I had no undercutting. It also runs hotter. I needed to swap out the stones that I was working in order to keep them cool enough to stay on the dop.

On some rocks I was beginning to think that it didn't give as good of a polish as the tripoli, but I'm not sure. It shined the clear areas on the crazy lace agates to a high gloss. So in this case, I'm thinking it was the material that didn't give a high gloss with 1200grit. Based on that assumption I was tempted to break out the cerium oxide. However, I was worried that it would chew the material up like the tripoli.

I had bought 14K diamond grit along with the 1200, but forgot to buy the second uncharged disk.

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Regardless, I'm left thinking that not only should I get 50K grit in case I run across more stones with very soft parts but maybe a grit somewhere around 800-1000 because the 1200 is pretty slow.

Update:
I had another thought regarding the 1200 diamond grit.

I've been buying the cheapest paste (5gr for ~$5 (cheaper diamond paste has less diamond)) and it has worked well because I try to do all the primary work on the wheels. By that I mean I don't want it to cut fast. But I wonder if I higher density diamond paste would take care of the slowness I'm seeing.

Opalized Petrified Wood from Arizona

Some chipping on the larger stone. I didn't resize and will just free-form it.



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Like the WY stone, 100grit wheel tore through it.



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220grit grind went smoothly



And the large one backlit... just because



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600grit sanding -

220 and 360grit sandings went smoothly.



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1200grit Polish --

Opalized Petrified Wood from Wyoming

Some chipping but nothing large.



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100grit wheel was fast on this stone. Also left a number of scratches.

Cabbing very large stones is a pain. The large one here is 52x38mm.



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220grit grind went smoothly



And the large one backlit... just because



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600grit sanding -

220 and 360grit sandings had several scratches develop. I got rid of most of them but a few more showed up when I tried to get rid of all of them.



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1200grit Polish --

Rodeo Lace Agate

Had some additional chipping on some of the stones. The one with two bezel lines was a hard choice - use the bottom as top and have a less interesting pattern or keep the same top and take the stone inside of the template.

I chose the better pattern.



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I worked this stone right after the Crazy Lace. In comparison it felt as soft as compressed clay. The 100grit wheel was very fast on this material.

The round came apart in an unclean break. Can't use the glue to fix it.



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220grit grind -



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600grit sanding -

220 and 360grit sandings went smoothly.




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1200grit Polish --

Mexican Crazy Lace Agate

More issues with this stone. The larger stone with the white spike had some of the edge fall away. I thought of resizing it but the pattern is just too nice. I took the sides in to get rid of the hole and to attempt to get it symmetrical.



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Worked these after the wonderstone and petrified wood.

Very strange material. Some of its components felt like they worked as hard as the corundum I've found. But it also had this very soft blood colored material throughout.

Unfortunately, my dragon's head was distorted by the curve of the cab. Also, one of the larger stones had a large cavity open up. But this isn't a cavity like I've dealt with on my found rocks. No, it is like a mini geode with little crystals in it. What I'm trying to figure out now is if I should leave it as is or try to fill it with crazy-glue or some kind of resin.

Ehh.



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220grit grind -



Backlit -



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600grit sanding -

220 and 360grit sandings went smoothly.



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1200grit Polish --

Wonderstone Rhyolite

Again had some chipping on grinding down to template. Also have some fissures on the sides of a couple. Not sure if I can fix those.



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These were about the same hardness as what I'm used to with my found rocks.

My "feather" rock came apart cleanly on a seam. Made a quick check on a site that I found on GeekPress. Nothing was said about gluing stone to stone, but it said super-glue was good for ceramic to ceramic.

I glued the two pieces together and continued on.



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220grit grind -



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600grit sanding -

220 and 360grit sandings had a few scratches develop but were removed in later sandings.



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1200grit Polish --

EUR/USD - Moved stop on short 1.4612, stop 1.4821, limit 1.4105
GBP/USD - Watching.
AUD/USD - Watching.
USD/CAD - No change on long 1.0021, stop 0.9766, limit 1.0465
EUR/JPY - No change on long 164.42, stop 159.50.
GBP/JPY - No change on long 228.52, stop 222.80, limit 236.71.

Blasted four hour power outage

Now I need to rush even more.

Zebra Jasper

I'll be happy when I'm done with this stinky stone.



100grit grind --

Well, the stench has gone from musk, mold, and rot to all of that plus rotten eggs.

A nice winged horse in the center of the larger stone though.



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220grit grind --

Only stinky when I smoothed the bottom. A very strange stone.



In the interest of saving time I'm not going to take pics of the 220 and 600 grit sandings.

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360grit sanding --



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These will have to wait until the 1200 diamond grit comes as the tripoli chewed into the one I tried. Not as bad as the speckled one I posted a while back but annoying nonetheless.

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1200grit Polish --

Gold Sheen Obsidian

The amount of chipping the 100grit wheel caused on this stone has me thinking I'll do as little work as possible on that wheel. I think I'll work sort of close to the bezel and just to the outer top marks.



100grit grind -

When going down to the bezel and the outer top lines I had no chipping. So I decided to finish the rough forming.

What I was unable to capture in a pic is how the banding can be seen at different levels in the stone and how it stands out when the light catches the sheen.




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220grit grind -

In showing these to my wife just now she said "I thought you drew those lines on". I said "no". And then she goes "ooooohhhhh!".

Women bring color to an otherwise gray world.



In the interest of saving time I'm not going to take pics of the 220 and 600 grit sandings.

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360grit sanding --

I wish I could capture the 3D shimmering bands. Very nice.



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Tripoli shined them up nicely. However, a number of bunched scratches showed up after polishing. I've seen these before on other rocks and I'm not sure if they were missed on the sanding steps or I polished too fast and too dry and caused some "flow".

Regardless, I'm going to polish them with cerium oxide now in an attempt to take care of those scratches.

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Well, that didn't get rid of the groups of scratches. My wife tells me she can only see them if I point them out and she looks real hard. But they stand out to me. Like a huge neon sign is pointing them out.

So I took them back to the 600grit sanding and hunted the things down. Based on how hard they were to get out, I suspect they showed up much earlier. Possibly around the 220grit sanding. But what stands out on polishing is *very* hard to see earlier on.

On polishing with tripoli for the second time there were cloudy areas (not full mirror shine). Not sure the cause of that, but I'll try another go with the cerium oxide.

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They're a bit better. One still has some faint scratches and some dull area. But the other one is OK.

Tempted to put up this pair with the contrast bumped up in order to give an idea what the gold sheen looks like.