Well, I’ve been out in the shop slabbing some more of the rough we found in Quartzsite and Tucson last winter. This time it was the Sonora Sunrise. I only came home with two chunks, but both carefully hand selected and I was pretty confident they were premium quality. The first one sure is. Here…
Author Archives: Ken
Rogue Gems Rolling Out The New Arrivals Feature
We love what we are doing here and are especially tickled when we can make things easier for our wonderful customers. Many regular visitors to our site have inquired about adding a feature so they could easily and quickly see what is new in the shop without having to click through every category in the…
Dendritic Opal: Australia
When we were in Quartzsite last this year we stumbled upon a few slabs of a very cool dendritic opal from Australia. We’d seen other forms of opal with dendrites from Australia, but not this one. The material appears solid and fairly hard. We like the pastel colors and the variation in the patterns. We’re…
Blank Slate: Huge Exotica Jasper Slice
While we wear many hats here at Rogue Gems, one of the most critical challenges is to create designs for our cabochon. It involves choosing only the very most interesting portions of the slabs and then selecting a shape that uses the selected portions of the slab to its greatest aesthetic advantage. One of the…
Back At the Saw: Polychrome Jasper Time
As I said here before, I pawed through a couple of tons of polychrome jasper in Tucson to come up with the three chunks I wanted. And now I’m slabbing the first one. Only a small part of each slab is usable to us since the little mountain scenes occur as a thin band around…
New Stones In Store: Spiderweb Jasper (Oregon)
A Little History What you’re seeing here are some great cabochons made from what’s called Spiderweb Jasper in the trade. It of course gets its name from the lines running though the green background. This material was apparently first found in Southeastern Oregon back in the 1960′s. (So I guess its appropriate I’ve got Credence…
Australian Boulder Opal Designer Cabochons and Beads
We thought we’d share this great parcel of five more Australian boulder opals with everyone. These are new in. We are now very fortunate to have a great selection of these in cabochons and beads. We have beads drilled side to side and drilled front to back. And we have matched pairs. These are some…
Something Different: Pyrite in Agate Cabochons (Mexico)
We rogues are always trying something new. Always looking for something different. And we usually find it. While at the QIA Pow Wow in Quartzsite for the 2011 show, we stopped in at the booth of one of our favorite gem stone carvers. She always has a bit of rough stone and slabs. I was…
Top Dog At Tucson: Polychrome Jasper Cabochons
As I posted on our Facebook page last night, polychrome jasper from Madagascar outsold all of our other top designer cabs at out Tucson shows. In fact, we sold all that we brought. Luckily (or not) we accidentally left some behind so we still have some left. We’ve put a couple up in our Sparklequest…