Birthstone?

[bibiloves]

Hi everyone,

I would like to have something small made to honor my first born. His birthday is January 10th. I googled and it said january birthday is garnet. Is that correct? Is garnet red in color?What do I need to look for when looking at gemstone? I'm thinking of sourcing the stone and have a simple bezel ring made by daniel m on etsy. Can someone point me to the right direction on where to get the stone? I have a very limited budget but not sure what range this project will fall under. Any advice/lesson is very appreciated. Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[chrono]

Garnet comes in many different colours which include yellow, green, orange, purple, red, and even blue (but not a very good blue). If you are going with Daniel M, you can have him source the garnet for you, especially on a tight budget.
[URL='https://www.pricescope.com/community/threads/new-to-coloured-gemstone-buying-read-this-first.174284/']https://www.pricescope.com/community/threads/new-to-coloured-gemstone-buying-read-this-first.174284/[/URL]

 

[deskjockey]

Garnet gives you a really wide range of colors Red is probably most traditional and is what is pictured on the birthstone charts, but there'e purplish, green, yellow, and orange too

I'm not sure what your budget is - for comparison or an idea, I got a fantastic purplish garnet from Barry B. (acstones.com. Unfortunately the other "cherry" garnet looks like it's been sold) and had Daniel M. set it, with total cost just over $200.

You can find some neat garnets pretty reasonably - I usually like rhodolite, but if you're looking to save a little, Dana has a neat orangey grossular garnet on his site:

http://mastercutgems.com/index.php?page=viewgem&id=7095

The cut looks a little rough but for some reason I really like it anyway.

I like the one on the left, and the one on the right (the one with the rutile inclusions), in the second to last row here, too:
http://www.litnon.com/index.php?page=view&cat=54

Also, http://www.gemrite.com/ seems to have a lot of garnets

(eta this one, which I like though it is probably very light in person, given the way it looks on a black background: http://www.gemrite.com/collections/gems/products/grossular-garnet-round-98-cts)

 

[minousbijoux]

I have heard several people recently running into trouble with Daniel M and deadlines, so please if you have a set deadline, make it very clear to them that you have a deadline that you must keep. The problems I have heard are promising finished pieces by deadlines and then going radio silent with no updates as they approach the deadline...granted, these are for projects a bit more complex than a bezel ring, but you never know so wanted to warn you.

 

[chrono]

Minou,
The last I heard, the wait time is 6 weeks and increasing?

 

[bibiloves]

Thanks deskjockey for the links. I will check them out. Didn't know that there are so many varieties of garnet.

Chrono & Minou: thanks for the advise and heads up about Daniel M. I messaged him a couple of days ago and it seems that he's a bit slow with replying. I don't really have a set deadline so I hope the wait won't be too hateful. Do you have rec on other jewelers for this type of projects?

 

[deskjockey]

For what it's worth I sent him my garnet right before the holiday rush at Christmas and had it back much more quickly than I expected (given what I was hearing about delays from other people about the same time). I think I sent it the second week of December and had it back right after the new year. Then again it was a very simple project