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Last updated:  June 2006

Processing the concentrate

After the jigs are “robbed” at the end of each day, drums of concentrate are taken back to the shed for drying and separating.  At this stage, the sapphire is mixed in with a large amount of ironstone and other material which must be removed before grading.

After separating, the collected material still contains a lot of unusable rock which must be graded out by hand.  The main thing to be removed is corundum - sapphire is the transparent variety of corundum but the non-transparent mineral is of little use and needs to be sorted out.  Zircon and other material is also removed at this stage to leave gem grade sapphire. Click here to see a short video clip of this machine working.

After the rough is sorted, graded and catalogued, it is time for the gem cutter to go to work creating a beautiful gemstone from a rough piece of stone.  Skill is required to assess each piece of rough in order to get the best result.  This picture shows a cutter working on a Reddestone Creek sapphire. Click here to see a short video clip of this process.

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