I just finished a darker blue/medium blue that came threw like a champ. It is only 5mm wide and about twice that in length. I had to cut down a much longer crystal to just get the area of the crystal that made an evenly balanced bi color stone. When I started, I would not have given very high odds that the junction between the different tone levels of blue would hold together. Now that it is polished I can see that the junction is jagged from being a terminus at one time. The final gemstone weighs 1.29 carats and I will try and get a picture up, since it is different. It not only was a solid gemstone, but it polished extremely well.
Bruce
About Bruce Fry
I was born in Summit, NJ in 1947 and graduated from Summit High School in 1966. I graduated from the Colorado School of Mines in 1970 and after spending another year in graduate school, I left to see the world of Brazil. After spending some more time discovering myself, I ended up working for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for 32 years as an Air Quality Engineer in the Department of Environmental Protection. I retired in 2007 and took up faceting gemstones again after a long hiatus that reached back to my twenties. I had started cutting cabochons when I was 13 and bought my first faceting machine when I was 15, but ran out of money and time until I retired.
My great love in gemology is tourmaline and the collection presented here represents my effort to get as much beauty and variety in the colors of tourmaline as I can. I was particularly lucky in being able to get unheated cuprian tourmaline before copper was discovered in gem grade tourmaline from Mozambique.
