The Birth of Opal: Natural and Synthetic Paperback – November 11, 2013

Fantastic book, jam packed full of info and references and not one opal picture in the whole how book.*****

Almost every page in this book has typos and grammatical mistakes. It doesn't seem very well thought through, and it doesn't deliver any content that's particularly entertaining or useful. There is no clear explanation of how to make opal in this book.On the other hand, I did like spending some time feeling obsessed about opal. Fun for its weirdness and eccentricity.

I bought this book specifically because he claimed to share the mythical/legendary method that Len Cram uses to synthesize opals in his shed. I've fiddled with the Gilson process on a small scale and was interested in the ion exchange method Cram reportedly used. Well... if the author knows the method he doesn't exactly share it. Dont get me wrong this book is a compendium of knowledge on the subject of opal and had a lot of information compiled together that would take a lot of work to research on your own, but there is very little new information or work in this book.The book covers geography, geology, hydrology, geochemistry, organic chemistry, biochemistry, and some electrochemistry too. It's not a book for casual readers, this attempts to be a serious study of how and why opal is formed.I say attempts because it is suffering from a serious glaring flaw. Young earth creationism. For ducks sake... I'm fine with the argument that opals can form in weeks or months instead of millions of years, that's literally what made me buy the book, an interest in short timescale formation of opal, but that possibility does not negate basic observable facts about the universe. When a fair number of your "scientific" references for this short timescale theory are cited to "Answers in Genesis" or "Creation Magazine" it makes it real hard to take it seriously as a hard science work. Also, at least one reference in the book is cited as a yahooligans page... Come on man, you're supposed to be writing a serious scholarly book here.Also, annoyingly, each chapter is subdivided into single paragraph topics that may interrelate, but as short on details. There is discussion of the hydrology and water chemistry of the opal bearing regions of the world, but no numbers. Tell me there's elevated sulfate and carbonate levels in the groundwater? Great, but are you looking at 10mg/L or 10g/L, and how much of each? This reads in many places like the outline for a four or five book series rather than a standalone reference.Also, the charts, tables, and diagrams throughout the book were TERRIBLE. For the love of all things holy, pay someone at the printing company to check your formatting and graphics. This is by far the worst part of the book. Tables that are nearly illegible and diagrams that are pixelated to hell and back.I mentioned above that I have some experience with the Gilson process for creating synthetic opal. The section of the book where he covers this is... Incomplete. Reading the patent will give you a better in depth look at what is happening and why than this book does. Again it feels like an outline for someone planning to write a book than the finished book. It is someone's notes saying "be sure to mention these topics when you talk about..." rather than "here is the combined sum of human knowledge about this topic".All told, it is a nice collection of information, but by no means is it the definitive work on the formation of opal. It will get you into the ballpark and show you where to start digging for more information, but it isn't a finished product.I'm glad I bought it because serious gemology books are scarce on the ground and it will be a useful collection of references for me to consult later, but it will not be the reference itself. In my opinion this one is doomed to only have one printing. In twenty years I expect people researching opal to see the old ads for this book and asking around for copies because it sounds like it has all the answers they were looking for... but they'll be disappointed even if they do find a copy when many of the references turn out to be websites that were never backed up rather than scholarly journals, books, or the like.

Not what it promises to be. Author uses it to advertise his private live rather than delivering promised outcome

The person it was bought for was very pleased.