Gemscapes Blog

In The Beginning

Occasionally clients bring me a special piece of rough to carve and that is how I first came in contact with the glowing red Oregon sunstone that produced the Roadrunner.

Sunstone forms in many places around the world, but Oregon sunstone is unique for its copper content. When the copper forms as thin hairs it produces an effect that looks like rippling waves of shimmering red light. This effect is known as schiller. This particular 55-carat piece of sunstone rough – that the client had mined himself – was bursting with schiller. It also had a thin band of green color surrounding the inner red core that he wished to preserve.

When I received the sunstone I studied it carefully and found several twinning planes. These are the straight lines circled in white in the photo. Twinning planes are not inclusions, or cracks, but solid seams where two layers of sunstone have grown together. Generally twinning planes do not cause structural problems in the cutting process, but to be safe I decided to avoid any extensive carving in these areas. This piece of rough cried out to be a sculpture. That is the form that would preserve and display most of its glory in tact.

Carving Begins

The sculpture would need a base and to fill this need the client provided a fist-sized piece of common white opal that he had mined in Nevada.

The opal was fractured in several places requiring me to saw the stone into five smaller, more solid chunks. This is not as easy as it sounds, in that saw blades are straight, and cracks curve and wander.

Of the 5 smaller pieces of opal this one had the most natural grace and I chose it to be the base.

During the initial shaping, I discovered an inclusion in the sunstone that threatened its structural integrity and needed to be removed. The pencil line shows where I will saw through the inclusion and create a flat plane that will become the bottom of the finished sculpture.

After the sunstone is shaped, the major carving work begins. The stepped edges on the right edge of the sunstone highlight the green stripe. I have also sawn flat surfaces on the top and bottom of the white opal to begin creating the base.

When I have finished all the carving work on the sunstone, I shape and carve the base. The grooves carved in the base flow into grooves carved in the sunstone. This creates a cohesive look between the two pieces. The opal base and sunstone sculpture are worked simultaneously from this point on, including many, many hours of sanding every millimeter of the surfaces with higher and higher grits of diamond compound.

A Sculpture is Born

In the finished sculpture the sunstone is brightly polished and the opal base is a matte finish with bright details. The top of the base is recessed to create a seat for the sunstone, insuring that the sculpture sits securely.

I love that the sculpture is beautiful from every angle, and the dimensional carving is different on each side. The thin green stripe along the edge is clearly visible.

The Oregon Green Bellied Roadrunner took about 40 hours to complete. He is now happily posturing in his new home.