Gday mate from a fellow Ozzie , I myself enjoy looking for gems ,haven’t done a lot of it but when I do I love it and usually take home more rocks than anything lol , nice looking rocks and stones grab my eye to not just the gems , I love agates and petrified woods and fossils , a bit of a range for me , I’m looking at gem cutting but not quite sure how to go about it , I’m starting to look at faceting machines hopefully to get into cutting gems ,something I have wanted to do for a long time , anyway enjoying your video ,liked and subscribed .👍
I would love to live in a country that has many facet-worthy minerals, many of which one can find on their own. Canada is an excellent country to live in but there is minimal facet material other than clear Quartz. Australia has an abundance of facet-worthy minerals as well as weather that I prefer :) I would love to spend a couple weeks there to do some fossicking for Topaz and Sapphire. For that matter, I'd love to purchase Sapphire directly from a miner .. preferably at a discounted rate :) I wonder if it's legal to find and take minerals/gemstones out of Australia ?
Just starting to get into faceting gems myself. Got a tumbler and two books on it on the way, intending to get a machine to actually cut/polish with soon as well. Not sure if I need a Kiln or not at the moment. I'm also unsure where I should look to get material to work with.
Hi Scott, Thanks. Finding your own gems has more personal satisfaction than buying them. Of course, cutting them adds more personal significance. Cheers Cliff
Hi Cliff, some nice finds from that trip, that river is a nice looking location to spend some time and the gemstones are a bonus. I have some sapphires & zircons I found in NSW in that 1 to 2 ct size that I thought were to small to have cut, I might have to re-evaluate. I enjoyed this video and watched it through a couple of times. Keep Safe & Keep Rockin
@@VintageTimeGems Thanks Cliff, I have over 100 small sapphires & zircons that we found at a fossicking park near Inverell. The majority of the sapphires are bombs though there are a couple of clear ones amongst them. As you loose so much during faceting I thought they were too small for cutters.
Hey I started getting into rockhounding last year and I’m having a lot of fun. How do I approach finding new locations specifically in the northern rivers area? I used to visit every creek around me but I went to most of them and spots further away are hard to find...