Boulder Opal Rough 3,521 items

Buy Boulder Opal Rough online direct from the mines at wholesale prices. Opal Auctions has huge range of rough from many different opal mines in Queensland Australia.

Our seller have permission to offer images of rough opal wet to help expose the colour to buyers .

This is a massive opal field covers thousands miles in central Queensland and each opal field has its own unique characteristics .famous fields go from Winton ,Quilpie to Koriot and Yowah and Jundah

These mining operations can be in some of the remote and wildest parts on this continent so to get normal supplies can be very challenging .Many operations have planes fly in supplies and if spare part is required it can stop miners for weeks and even diesel is double price of the cities due to transport costs and also machine like bulldozers can go through hundreds gallons day of fuel

So mining for boulder opal is now expensive ,and fortunately miners are now finding good deposits.

As this Boulder opal rough is formed a seams or veins colour in ironstone the parcel can be bulky and have to be worked

The miner has cutters on site or at branch and they slab and saw parcel lots into smaller manageable sizes

A mine can have dozen 40 gallon drums so first stage is to process to find top colour bars

So miner has to do lot work before the second stage of slabbing and shaping the virgin rough into rubs as single or parcel lots or a s pairs splits

The market for this category is actually more rubs a s all excess ironstone has been cut off and this saves on shipping costs

Boulder opal rough can be very messy to cut as ironstone leaves brown stains so keep cutting equipment a s clean a s possible to stop dust particle s effecting your polish

Enjoy polishing and shaping these natural opal gemstone.

Further Reading

• How To Cut Black Opal
• How To Cut And Polish Boulder Opal
• How To Cut Ethiopian Opal
• Boulder Opal Cutting problems in China
• Rough Opal
• Australian Boulder Opal Rough Chart
• Why Is Opal Rough Always Shown Wet