Rough Opal.

Total pieces: 2

Explanation: The term ‘rubs’ refers to the practice in Australia of cleaning away most of the unusable opal potch and other impurities so that you are not paying freight for material that is just waste. If you need some cheaper opal for practice, please make a request for this in your order and we will include some as a bonus. Sometimes some nice gems are found in this material, and we are happy if you benefit by this. Rough opal is not easy to identify at times and if you find that anything you order does not come up to a finished value that you can at least double your money on your investment, please let us know and we will give you extra bonuses in the future. And don’t worry, we trust your honesty in this matter.

Help with Opal Cutting: Take a look here for a video introduction to opal cutting. Upon request, for each purchase of rough opal, or indeed any other opal on our site, you will get a free copy of our book “Opal-An Australian Adventure (worth $19) which covers the cutting, polishing, marketing and full history of Australian opal. Our purpose is not just to sell you some rough opal but to assist in your education on the subject.

Recommendations: Traditionally, opal has been cut in the oval shape. In recent times, however, because of the scarcity of the stone, the practice has been more to cut opals in their free form shape. In other words, whatever shape they naturally come in, or to a shape that you would like to create yourself. By doing this, you are creating a gemstone with much more design potential because you will have both the natural uniqueness of this amazing gem and a shape different to others. This inspires creativity in design because free forms have much more design potential. Please take a look here for some good ideas.