Turritella Agate - Wyoming, USA

There is great fun to be had cutting this material, although it has an occasional trick of cracking clean through - often late in the cutting process of course! The fossilised remains of these little gastropods is a window in to an ancient undersea world, it is curious that these particular organisms had the good fortune to find themselves below some form of igneous material. The consequent agate build up in the fossil bed gives the material real depth and shine.

I cut this small cab some time ago, but despite it's minimal size, the central fossil was really well framed. I left the dome quite high to give the material chance to show it's 3D qualities. The stone is often surprisingly hard and does have the tendency to undercut as your shaping the cab, so keep checking and adjust your motion to compensate for softer areas. I set the 18x13mm cabochon in a silver plated commercial setting as a small pendant, it ended up looking really nice for such a small chip of rough!

18x13mm Turritella Agate - Wyoming, USA