I've read the Paul Downing book on cutting opal and practiced quite a bit, but I still often seem to get hung up on opals midway, something that never happens with other stones. With other stones, even really nice vintage Marlborough chrysoprase, I'll often ruthlessley cut away any imperfect areas, even when the color is really fine, if I think I can get a perfect small stone. I can't seem to get myself to do that with opal when it has good play of color. So here is a faced opal. The front looks great IMO. I actually ground through two different color lines to create a larger faced stone (the color lines waved a bit), but it pretty much has color completely covering it with no dead spots. The problem is the back which has sand spots but also has great color due to a thin color line there which I have now faced but haven't finished (and I'd love a two-sided stone).
Sorry for the poor pictures. I am still using my iphone 5 and making no adjustments to the photos after, so they aren't the best.
Question- Should I:
a) leave it as is, polish it with the sandspots in place and cover them with a unique setting
b) try to carve out the sandspots and do some sort of carving on the back, possibly risking getting cracks because it will then be quite thin at that tip and then could require reshaping
c) grind the back down further, making the stone much thinner and probably losing much of the color on the back
d) something else