Opal Inlay Jewelry – How it is made.

There are many ways to set gemstones into rings, pendants and earrings or other pieces. There is claw set, bezel set, half bezel set and there is inlaying.
Normally you get a stone such as a ruby and it might measure 4mm and be an oval shape. It might also be 2.5 mm deep. So you go looking for a setting to fit that stone. You might need to have a setting specially made to suit your desire.

Inlay setting is much different to that. The manufacturing jeweller makes a piece of jewellery to a chosen design. Let’s say it is a ring. He makes the ring entirely even up to the stage of almost the final polish. Then he finds some stones to set in the ring. At this stage, he does not even have to have any stones in mind. He then finds some opal of a special kind.

The very best opal for this purpose is likely to be a good crystal opal. This is opal which is transparent. You can see faint shimmers of colour through it when you hold it to the light, especially sunlight. It looks very ordinary until you put it down on a black background then the magic happens. Brilliant colours burst into life. (If you wouild like to see some photos go to this article on my website: www.opaljewelryexpress.com and navigate to JewelryInformation/Opal Articles/Inlay ewelry Making at the bottom of the first opal page you come to.)

Any metal can be used for making inlay jewellery. The settings are made in the form of a hollow or a well in which the opal sits. It can be any shape rectangular, round, triangular or nay other shape imaginable. The depth of the well should be about 2mm. The stone is cut to fit into this well.

This is the way that I cut the stones and others do it differently. First I choose the top face of the stone and I grind it flat. I then put a dop stick on the top of that surface. A dop stick is a piece of wooden stick which has hot wax on it. This is stuck to the opal so that I can hold the opal.

Next I look down into the hole and I then start to cut the opal to the shape. Let’s say it is a rectangle for this exercise. I have two long sides and two short sides. I start to cut each side until I get close to the size. From then on I start to taper the opal sides as I get closer to the shape. This way I get the opal to fit into the shape but if I make an error in judgement I can cut some off the bottom and make the taper wider at the top end so that it fits.

Eventually the stone will fit in the well but it will protrude about one millimetre out of the top. I then mix the glue which will be a super strength Araldite two part epoxy glue. This is a clear glue but I then mix in a tiny drop of black tincture that I get from a paint shop.

I put the stone in the well with this glue. It is a tight fit but as it was tapered to get it inside then there is room for the glue. I make sure the metal is scratched clean and I warm the opal to dry it a little. I then apply mild pressure with a tiny clamp such as a spring loaded clothes peg on the stone and I leave this for 36 hours.

I then come back and I grind the top of the stone flush with the metal. Sometimes I grind the metal a fraction as well. I then polish the stone on a polishing wheel for opals and I hand polish the metal with small wheels and the correct metal polish.

That is a great deal of work and it takes a lot of practice. Sometimes, if I haven’t cut any inlay stones for several weeks then I will cut the first one with a piece of potch or worthless opal. This might take me 30 minutes and is a waste of my time but it is necessary to get my eye in, or get the feel for what I am doing. I find if I cut all day after a few hours I can just pick up a piece and grind it to the approximate size after just a single look at the piece of jewellery. But I lose that ability after about a week.

How strong are inlaid stones?

Well the stone is very well protected as it is sitting down surrounded by metal with a cushion of glue between it and the metal. So I think it is very safe. If the glue is a good one then it will be extremely difficult to get the stone out. I generally need to drill stones out of pieces if I am not happy with the inlay result. If all stones have to come out I can put the jewellery piece in a solvent for a few days and the glue will dissolve and the opal will be unharmed.

Carat Weight for Gemstone Jewelry – What’s it all mean?

Carat is the term used for the measurement of the weight of diamonds and other gemstones. The word comes from the carob seed. A couple of hundred years ago merchants looked for something to compare the weight of gemstones with. They finally chose the carob seed as this seed was a very consistent weight from one seed to the next. So if a customer wanted a gemstone weighing two carobs seeds then another merchant would know what he wanted. In English the word ended up being pronounced as carat. When you see “ct” then that is an abbreviation for “carat.” Then you might also see “TW” or “ct TW” and those mean the total weight in carats of more than one stone in a ring.

Is a one carat diamond and a one carat opal the same size? A great question and the answer is a clear NO! The reason that gemstones are different sizes for the same weight is because some are more dense than others. Let me explain that concept of density. If you got a plastic bottle of water and put in the freezer the next day the bottle will have expanded and will be bigger than when you put it in there. But it will weigh the same! So an opal has water and air and looser mineral items inside it and will take up more space than a compact and compressed or dense diamond will. So an emerald has a different density to a topaz or a diamond or an opal.

What about small diamonds in my ring? What size are they? That’s another great question. A one carat diamond is a big expensive rock! We all know that but what about those little diamonds that we sometimes call accent stones? Well, we weigh them in what we call “points.” A one carat diamond has 100 points. So in rings we tend to have small diamonds which weigh one or two or three or more points. In the trade we say: “two pointer” or a “three pointer.” When we see that written as part of the make up of a piece of jewellery we will often see it written as hundredths of a carat. 0.01 means one point, 0.05 means a 5 point stone and so on. When we see a quarter of a carat we would see 0.025 carat.

However, a one carat diamond will cost a great deal more than 100 one pointers or 50 two pointers. One carat is a big diamond and rare, but little chips made into one pointers are not rare at all even though the quality might be the same as the big diamond.

Opals are an exception. We still use carats but anything under a carat we usually break down into tenths. So we might say an opal weighs 0.4 carats. We would not call it a 40 pointer like we might for a diamond. We would say an opal weighs 2.65 carats if we were being precise.

Finally, you might see a piece of jewellery weighing five carats. That will mostly mean the total weight of the piece of jewelry the metal plus the gems. Then you might see that you can get it in 14 carat gold or 18 carat gold. That’s carat gold and that’s another story so don’t confuse that with the carat weight of the gemstones.

My Favorite Gemstone Comes from the Planet Mars.

I wanted to buy my wife an exotic gemstone, but what do you buy a jeweller’s wife. She has diamonds up to her armpits and opals coming out of her ears.
Then I suddenly thought there is one gemstone that is found on the red planet. I’ll get her one of those.

I wanted a gem that got here the hard way, one that had a history, one that you didn’t just trip over on a beach. Well this gemstone is also found on the planet earth as well as Mars so I could get it locally. It got here the hard way through being blasted up from the earth’s mantel as molten mineral to crystalise near the surface as a beautiful green, much overlooked, not well respected gem in modern times, with an up market name Peridot!

Peridot is pronounced the French way which sounds like Pair-a-doh. It might be from the French word peritot for unclear since the stone generally has a lot of inclusions or it might be from the Arabic faridat meaning gem.

It is one of the only gemstones which come in only one colour. I like that too! It is definite and knows what it is. The green will vary because of the amount of iron present. It has often been called the poor man’s emerald. Well, emerald is thought of as the most expensive gemstone so I guess that is a compliment in itself.

But if we go back in time peridot was there from the beginning. Peridot was one of the twelve stones in the breastplate of Aaron the Jewish high priest from Exodus in the bible. This breastplate had twelve stones which represented the twelve tribes of Israel. So it was a very important gemstone in ancient times. It has been mined as a gem for over four thousand years.

It was mined on the island of Zagbargad since ancient times. Imagine if you could get hold of one which was mined here in ancient times. How fantastic would that be as it is all but mined out now.

Although Peridot comes from a host of different countries such as Australia, Pakistan, Myanmar, Egypt, Mexico and Brazil the quality varies from one source to another. But 95% of the entire world production comes from the San Carlos Apache Reservation in Arizona.

But if you want the real exotic gemstone from outer space you will have to look for the name Pallasites. This is a type of meteorite named after a German Peter Pallas who described it way back in 1772. In 2003 Nasa discovered peridot crystals on Mars. This was the first time that a gemstone had been found on another planet.

A beautiful stone which set in gold will make stunning jewellery and if you are lucky to get hold of one which came from Mars or somewhere else in outer space you will be indeed fortunate.