How to Polish Opals by Hand

Last Updated: October 5, 2020

If you've ever been opal fossiking/noodling, you may have found some (not very valuable) stones, and wondered if it were possible to polish these stones without the help of expensive machines. Well, it is, once you know how!

Steps

1
Place the knife sharpening block onto a hard surface. The rough/coarse side should be facing up.
2
Spray some water onto the block and start rubbing the opal across the surface to form an approximate shape. You just need to get it in a size good enough to put on a dop-stick.
- Be patient! This bit will take a while.
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3
Heat the wax on the dop-stick. Then place your stone into the hot wax (make sure your fingers are wet to prevent the hot wax from sticking and burning you). (Note: You may need to dry the back of the stone with a little heat, or let it air dry, as the wax will not stick to a wet stone.) Turn off your heat source.
4
Rub the opal on sandpaper of different coarseness. Put the sandpaper on top of your hand towel to give it cushioning. Rub the stone on sandpaper from 400 grit to 1200 grit.
5
Pour some cerium oxide onto the leather. Wet it.
6
Rub the opal-on-the-dop-stick on the cerium oxide paste. This is the final phase/polishing.

Community Q&A

Question

Where do I buy cerium oxide?

ZacPro1

Community Answer

You can buy Cerium Oxide from BlackOpalsDirect at: blackopaldirect.com/product/lapidary-tools-guides/cerium-oxide/.