Jelly Opal Ring

This is a Mexican Jelly Opal and silver ring.

 The ring shank is from a 1840's fine silver spoon that I got at a yard sale.  Fine silver is really soft and someone used the spoon as a hammer.  It couldn't be repaired, so I'm trying to get 3 pieces of jewelry from it.

Here is some of the process:

I don't like rings to be all symmetrical.   First of all, your fingers aren't round and then the valleys between the fingers don't line up.  A perfectly round and symmetrical ring looks good, but it won't really wear comfortably. 

The jelly opal is really a fragile stone and I actually cracked it before it was set. 

So I used Opticon to fix it.  Or well, mostly repair it.  It did a good job.

This picture shows how bad the crack was before the Opticon.

Between the planning and repair of the stone, this ring probably took 20 hours.  And that is a quick time since I didn't have to fabricate the shank.