I spent the weekend with my main rough dealer from Kenya, and picked up some nice stones to work with. Rough was in pretty short supply, he had about 1/4 the amount he normally does, and of course the prices were up too. I'll try in the next few days to post some pictures of some of the more interesting pieces I was able to buy. Here's a partial list: Natural untreated Ruby from Tanzanian, Aquamarine in a medium blue, Umba Sapphires, some new sapphire from Lodwar in Kenya, a color change garnet, Iolite and a few others.

Here's one of the new Lodwar sapphires cut. These are all natural, unheated stones.

Two new stones this week. The first is a blue Sapphire from Madagascar.


This second stone is a white topaz from Nigeria cut in a snowflake design with frosted facets. The frosting shows up better in person, especially with a darker background. Makes for a fun interesting stone.

Tags: Sapphire

I finished up two new garnets this weekend. Both are at the top of their class for color, and both are from Tanzania.
The first is an Umbalite, followed by a very nice yellow Grossularite. These are the same type of garnet as mint and tsavorite, but yellow.

Tags: Umbalite & Yellow Grossularite Garnets

Here's one I missed photographing the other night. It's a Zircon from Tanzania. These stones are kind of a root-beer brown color, but with just some gentile heating over the flame from an alcohol lamp they turn yellow. The more you heat them, the lighter the get. This one I just heated a bit. If you heat them too long, the will go colorless.

Tags: Zircon

Just finished up a new spinel. This is another stone from Tajikistan that is 5.07 cts. Rather large for these spinels. Here's an article by Richard Hughes and Vincent Pardieu dealing with ruby and these spinels from Tajikistan.




I haven't been slacking the past week, I was actually working on some stones for one of them members of the GemBusters forum. Here they are..
Try to guess what they are!

Tags: Spinel