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 Post subject: Reflection and refraction on a gray day with tourmaline.
PostPosted: Wed Sep 07, 2016 5:35 pm 
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Joined: Thu Sep 25, 2008 10:33 am
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Location: Mars PA
Sitting in a quiet space with my tourmaline collection spread out in trays around me, I am feeling rather low. The availability of rough, I have cut all the tourmaline in my collection, and its costs have made collecting tourmaline so much more difficult. The effort to continue to cut interesting tourmaline is forcing me to seek good homes for some of my tourmaline. I also hope to educate my older daughter in the fine points of tourmaline and give her time to learn the art of selling.

If rarity was the only criteria for judging the value of a tourmaline, I would have some very expensive tourmalines that I paid very little for in the rough. but of course rarity is only part of the picture. It is amazing how the trade has focused on the rarity of Paraiba tourmaline when it is its great beauty that drove its initial demand. In the beginning no one really knew how rare it would be and high quality tourmaline has the habit of showing up in abundance at times. (Nigeria in the 80s) And the colors defined as Paraiba are not unique to copper bearing tourmaline. (paraiba like from Afghanistan.) While the trade is stretching for suitable descriptions of the Paraiba colors, what they are really taking about is the glow-like quality/vividness/brightness and not the color. (I have discovered that my favorite color in tourmaline is vivid.)

So now tourmaline has been discovered and prices for even "common" colors of tourmaline have gone up many times. "New" colors like purple, orange and yellow (canary) have been discovered in suitable quantities to promote and the view of tourmaline as dark green with dead ends has passed forever (I hope). But now we have a new world of "experts" declaring that tourmaline is either a "day" or "night" loving gemstone. This brings me back to my gray day as I pick out a tourmaline or two or three to feast on. Yes some of the group lies silent, but others love the lower level, bluer, diffused light. One of the remaining incandescent lights in the room, definitely increases the vividness of some of the collected rainbow of colored tourmaline. It can also strongly effect some tourmaline's color. This is not theoretical, so believe your eyes not the words of some newly minted "expert" on tourmaline, who has spent his previous professional life looking at sapphires etc.

As I keep picking out suitable tourmaline and watch them perform in the gray natural light I grow more positive. Yes the days of wine and roses may have passed for my collection, but the color/tone/vividness of both the older and newer additions to the collect work their magic and I am ready to keep on the quest. The quest of satisfying my color addiction. Something different will do my friend and it is out there. So please don't put tourmaline in a new "box" of ignorance. Tourmaline can be darn near anything to anyone that loves color and its presentation in gems, in all its subtleties.

Bruce


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 Post subject: Re: Reflection and refraction on a gray day with tourmaline.
PostPosted: Wed Sep 07, 2016 10:23 pm 
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Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2012 9:31 pm
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You could always join the dark side and diversify into cabochons. More rough available at much cheaper prices, sometimes in really nice colors. The rough for these two put me back a few bucks and I doubt the zoning would have done as well in a faceted stone even if it had been clean enough:
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 Post subject: Re: Reflection and refraction on a gray day with tourmaline.
PostPosted: Thu Sep 08, 2016 8:52 am 
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Joined: Thu Sep 25, 2008 10:33 am
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Location: Mars PA
I am an old "cabber". I started working on them when I was thirteen years old and it did not end when I started faceting at fifteen. But when I left home at nineteen, my cabbing set up, which was never very much was left behind forever.

Depending on the rough and why the rough is not for faceting, I think tourmaline makes spectacular cabs. I helped a goldsmith I knew get a Rubellite cab that was slightly translucent, but not broken. It was polishec by an expert and it was one of the most beautiful tourmaine's I have ever seen. But I have never really cared for the "broken" look even when I was just cabbing. So I guess I am revealed to be not only addicted to color, but also the flash and sparkle of a well cut and polished faceted stone. But for now I am working more in the middle ground between flawless facet rough/cut stone and cabs by working with significantly included material. I try and buy larger pieces of semi-facet material with good crystal. By orienting the flaws and cutting smaller stones, while excepting the resulting loss in yield that usually occures, you can come up with a beautiful and different tourmaline. The range of color is generally better in included material then the perfect AAA ones. And then there are my favorite babies, which have a reasonably light network of flaws that evenly affect the stone, but don't reduce its transparency too much. I am sure they would make great cabs, but as faceted stones they still sparkle. Some of my favorite cuprian tourmaline are like that and I have one vivid golden yellow tourmaline, along with others, that lookes like a large piece of rock candy. And it would have made a great cab, but those days are behind me. But I will never think of cabbing being the "dark" side of beauty.


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