Spent the day at the Quartzsite Gem and Mineral Club today and walked away with this baby.

This club is the largest in North America.  It has numerous opportunities to have fun, participate and learn about all things rock.

Information on the club is here.

This is my second year here and first thing on my agenda was to get back into the faceting lab.

This is Paul, my instructor, who helped me refresh my memory and my skills.  He was great.  All the instructors are top notch and all are volunteers.

I wish I had taken a before pic of the chunk of glass I chose to work on today.  It was given to me by my friend, Jamie, last year and I promised to do a stone for her.

This is called cutting the pavilion.  It is the bottom of the stone.  Each type of cut has a different pattern to follow.  Faceting is fascinating.

This is the lap where the stone is cut.  A series of measurements and settings determine the angles of the sides.

When the pavilion is finished, the stone is transferred to another dop stick and the sides or girdle is cut.  The bumpy stuff shown on the top here is the remaining wax left over from the first dop, but that will be ground away when we cut the top.

Doesn’t look like much now, but the next steps of cutting the crown and top or table will soon bring this stone to life.

Now it looks like something.  Time to cut the table and we’re all done.

How beautiful… you almost wouldn’t know it was glass.  The cut is called a Mini Barion and it is 6.5 carats.

I’ll be spending the next two days in the faceting lab brushing up on my skills and trying to be a sponge and soak up all the information I can.