Hiya all…again. Seems like the web wants you to spend time as much as the television people do. My website is back online after wresting it back from Tucows. This new version will replace the other one if I can get back to it. Not much going on. Been a fairly cold and damp march with just enough good weather to see that it WAS muddy at the mines. The Opal Queen is not going to be open like it was last year. New operators if any. Call ahead. The Peacock looks to be on their usual schedule of opening first. The NWR road crews have been working on that stretch of the Virgin Ranch Rd to fill washouts and put rocks on the road. Summer is coming.
can somebody disclose how to tell the difference between virgin valley opals & other opals. Is it possible to splice virgin valley opal specimens into penent size.
The Way I use is visual but in a cut stone The Virgin Valley, Mexican, Ethiopian, Indonesian and other “volcanic” opals have the same appearance. The airy moving colors in crystals are most identifiable but the stones play of color is the complete range to the solid palette that Australian opal usually is. They have “noble” opal that is airy like ours but the more saturated stones were the preferred and that is where they started selling. Our opals are most identifiable in the rough. The matrix is the easy answer. Yes Virgin Valley is workable. The problem being the first drying. I do not have a bulletproof method…YOU can work it this way..never dry it, Slice it to slabs, grind to shape and presand, the most common treatment is Opticon and there is a good discussion on it’s use on the Village Smithy site. So you then finish the polish on the final treated stone. This is the best chance to get a big stone out of wet rough. On dry specimens of wood and opal (the wood is usually oporous) I soak it with Cyro acrylate (like hot shot, starbond, super t) Then slab or polish it. If the glue does not penetrate re glue it when shaped.
I dry mine first. Sometimes it will break into smaller pieces when rewet so if you are really scared of breaking it, don’t. Cut it dry slowly by hand.