Summertime and the living is easy. I have a great deal of outside work to do because I am painting my old story and half craftman house barn red and cream again. The garden also takes much of my time, but even that can not satisfy my need for a color fix from tourmaline.
I still have the new expensive cuprian tourmaline piece of rough from somewhere in Mozambique (Probably). But I don’t want to make a serious effort on it until I take the edge of on some less important efforts. I keep butting my head against a golden yellow from Kenya that is probably the species Dravite. It is a pretty color, but the rough is prone to reveal hidden flaws and can be a pain for me to polish. I was lucky with the table and since no problems developed with it, the polishing went very fast. Now I had a micro flaw open up on the side of the stepped crown and it is not pretty, But I need to get threw it, before I can breath in fresh air. The stone will never be a top quality gemstone and it is just not worth recutting it. (It could easily break again, somewhere) It should still be pretty though I don’t know if it could ever be set.
So I need some success and less frustration, before I tackle, what will probably be the last cuprian I will ever cut. Success is not a deep purple cuprian that is eye clean or the discovery of Laurellite, a reverse color change cuprian tourmaline, but a bright crisp color in a big enough piece of rough, so I can get a nice sized stone with naturals that are not to obnoxious. That is really not that much to ask. Is it?
Bruce
