Thanks Rog. Had a bit of a battle, but we made it through.

Thanks very much, Charlemagne~

Thank you Trevor - i'll keep on keepin' on indeed.

Thanks for your immense kindness and confidence in my latent potential, Franz. With enough time, persistence and wonderful folk such as yourself, we'll get there~

@@GemologyforSchmucks I will do my best to get you there

That's absolutely right. Books and videos are great, but nothing beats getting your hands dirty.

Thanks very much, Robert. I try to do the best I can with my skill level. Sometimes I feel like im missing a secret ingredient to the soup, but overall i'll call it a net win :D

My pleasure, Chandra~

Thanks Thoralf~!

Thanks Rog~

Glad to be of service KP - and your second observation on the preservation of the crystal is also correct. The rate of black C axis tourmaline may be lower, but there is also often more crystal for the face size of the cut stone.

Definitely a good suggestion for anyone who is manufacturing a new ring. When dealing with vintage mountings, I prefer to leave them as close to the original as possible for history's sake.

Thanks James~ glad to be of service. At some point I want to have a go at cutting cabochons aswell. There are many excellent gem materials that I think could have a first life as a cabochon. Enjoy it as a cab while you think about how you might want to best facet it. If you never want to facet it, you lose nothing. If you want to sell it off, a cab will give a great idea of the colour and clarity of the stone while not losing much of the potential that a rough crystal would have. Loads of opportunity there, I think. Cheers

Cheers and thanks. I think an infallible schmuck might break the economy XD

Flat opaque stones do not typically have the same visual impact or price point in the market of my client, so we've not been using many of them. We have been using Type A Jade to some extent however. As you said though, should someone want to use opaque stones, this would be a great mounting for them too.

Jade is not only one popular and expensive opaque stone. Turqouise still popular. Maybe because you are in Thailand turqouise is not as popular?

@@lc4n333 Turquois is popular in some groups, but generally its not competitive in western mid to high markets. where these rings are being sold. North Americans associate it with Navajo/ southwest silver jewelry, which while popular, is quite inexpensive. Turquoise is also frequently stabilized and subjected to other less readily detectible treatments. I'm not interested in walking through a minefield for such stones.

Turquoise almost always need stabilization becsuse it is so porous. Zachery treatment is not detectable for regular labs but it is the best stabilization. It make turqoise more durable and preserve the color. Stabilization is still accepted but dye is not. As always, be wary of synthetics and reconstructed turquoise. The surest way to detect those two is molecular test like spectrometry.