just a diamond hardness tester and a jewelers loupe, nothing really fancy since a lot of the real fancy tools are so pricey.

This is such an excellent tip! I have a big piece of bright orange gemstone that I am fairly certain is spessartite and this may be the trick I need to make that conclusive! Thanks again!

Yeah a high precision scale and a good quality jewelers loop was my first purchase after I started buying online. Will look into the hardness testing kit, been using my diamond tester since I can get a

Oh wow, I had no Idea you could cast around sapphire, that opens up a huge amount of opportunities a lot of organic forms and shapes I wouldn't even try to set stones into if I have to do it by hand. Thanks

Thanks, it was one of those things where I bought the stone impulsively and spent a long time with no idea how to use it, just knew it needed to center the brokenness of it. The seller had a few beautiful

If you have access to a diamond tester that will give you an idea of the stones hardness which should help you narrow it down significantly. Not sure if there is a diy solution but the diamond tester just

I like the the tin can idea,if you could use plyers to roll the joining edge in on one it would probably be almost as good as the commercial ones. I actually built two wooden rectangular frames out of

Oh definitely, I actually use Delft clay sometimes, with a little $10 crucible and the map torch I sometimes get surprisingly good results. If you’re interested check my blog the last post I submitted

Thanks so much! And thanks for all the information there, definitely good to know since the whole hive ecosystem is pretty new to me. I will definitely be putting those tips to good use, just as soon as