I'm continuing with getting through the material and making 3-4-5 and a few 6mm rounds for earstuds, some gorgeous colours in the material so hope it cuts well and makes beautiful earstuds.
I've included a few pictures to show the stages I go through to make the rounds, there is about 2 days work for the batch shown below, its painstaking as it is on a small scale and you have to try to be exact to get the rounds to the correct size.
Some of the process shown below.
First is to select material and cut to shape/flat back to allow supergluing to stainless steel rod for correct stud sizing.
Backs of the opal have to be flat and parallel with the front colour bar or the finished round won't be any good.
I have to use superglue as the opals are too small to use dopping wax
Second glue to rods, trying to position correctly to get the best bit of the opal chip for cutting.