Opal earrings are expensive and opal miners and opal cutters like to make even the smallest or very small opal stone into something to sell and look good in jewelry.
The opal cutter starts with a piece of opal and wishes to make it a specific shape, often oval, but there will be unusual shapes such as a triangle and small chips left over so that these small pieces are polished as. well in the hope that they can be sold as chips that will be used to make jewelry in some way.
However sometimes a good piece of opal will be so thin that it will split if we use it in a ring or in other pieces of jewelry. In that case the tailor could attach a piece of ordinary opal, called a potch, to the back of it and this would strengthen it so that it could set the jewelry. These two pieces of opal that are glued together are now called another thing - doublet and another name for that is the opal product. Some people like to call it a solid opal but no matter how you think about it you cannot escape the fact that it is doublet. Twice as much value than solid opal.
Sometimes a small piece of opal is so thin that even supporting it to tighten it is not enough for the cutter to place a third piece on the first two. This third piece is usually a clear quartz or maybe glass or other clear object.Triplets are worth less than double.
The mosaics are made by very patient and talented people who find brightly colored opal chips and glue them together in intricate patterns and make them into jewelry or curtains hanging on the wall. They are usually very nice and cheap as most of them come from the artists of the cottage industry.
Opal compounds are a great way to use what would be good pieces of opal that could not be discarded. And they are a great way for everyone to afford a piece of opal jewelry.
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