faceting

Been super busy with life, but finally got back to cutting. This is the second of four chrome diopside stones I’m cutting.

Design is Star Cut by Justin K Prim, but adjusted for the absurdly high RI this stone has. Pretty chuffed with how this came out!

Okay not really! It’s just nanosital, which is a synthetic material very similar to glass. Gemstones always look alarmingly tasty, but this one was so reminiscent of a green Jolly Rancher when I polished it that I just had to give it an appropriate staging....

I saw another faceter experimenting with frosting the edges between facets and the result was so intriguing I decided to copy the idea. It created such a cool snowflake effect in this aquamarine!...

Just finished faceting this monster over the weekend. This thing was so dang easy to polish it felt a little suspicious if I am being perfectly honest. Overall I am extremely happy with my results. Even the girdle!...

Let’s post links and descriptions of our favorite resources and vendors....

Tiny orange zircon. I cut this once and was super unhappy because only a few facets would take a polish. Bought more lightning laps to give me more prepolish steps, and suddenly everything is happy. Design is Square Princess Cut by Justin K. Prim

I just tried cutting moissanite for the first time and goodness gracious, it took forever at the prepolish and polish steps, I assume because of the mohs hardness. After spending ungodly hours on that polish I will never again complain about polishing quartz....

I took on a design way beyond my skill level just to see how I would fare. I didn’t leave quite enough material for my crown so please ignore the small divot in the center of the table, as well as the occasional missed meetpoint. Learning experiences abound!...

Design is Fusion Seven Oval 1.43. Got some finer grit lightning laps and now I’m getting a finish I really like on tourmalines.

Unfortunately this stone has a fracture and inclusion right at the cutlet....

This is one of the most perfect cuts I’ve managed. The meet points are all as perfect as I could get, as well as the polish. I chose a more standard round cut than what my son designed as I wanted to lighten the stone more due to the overall color saturation of the material....

Design is Emerald Cut by Justin K Prim. Probably a bit too much colour mixing on the ends of the stone, but I’m happy with the effect

My son has really started to get into faceting. He bought a boule of hydrothermal emerald(man made) as he wanted to cut a design he made specific to emerald....

This is one of two stones I’m cutting from a piece of morganite. This stone was started almost a month ago, and sat on the dop for weeks after I cut part of the crown and found an inclusion of bubbles that intersected a set of facets on one side looking like a fracture....

Simple little stone to start off my year. Design is Asscher-Cut by Justin K Prim.

Amethyst (unknown location), 2.085 carats, 8x1 mm x 5.8 mm, design is Spellbound by Jeff Rhonemus....

So my son, who is studying engineering, has gotten into faceting due to the math/science behind optimizing a cut. He designed this in GemCad Studio, and cut this stone this last weekend. Turned out incredible, and I wanted to share.

Fire opal, 0.335 carats, Princess Trilliant by A. Collins...

I wanted to gift my maid of honor something special, since she really went above and beyond in my wedding planning. She loves giant flashy diamonds (which of course I don’t cut… and can’t afford!), and was thrilled to learn I was giving her this massive 14 carat beauty....

Design is Trifectancy, by Andrew Brown. This was much larger but the culet decided to stay behind in the cone dop, forcing me to start over. Still, I love how affordable this stuff is, and it always looks nice.

For those just interested in the stone information and not the backstory: Citrine, 3.015 carats, design is Gram Princess by Jeff Graham (optimized in GCS to work for citrine RI)....

Cheap bit of tourmaline but I’m happy how it turned out. The c axis didn’t look this closed when I picked the design, but I probably should have done something to hide that, whoops. Design is Emerald Cut by Justin K Prim.

I’ve got several very pale, quite long aquamarine crystals, and wanted to do something interesting with one of them. The design is Blue Ice, by Jeff Graham. Long facets are a pig to polish, I don’t know why I keep picking them. I’m pretty happy with this, although I mistakenly overcut a facet by quite a bit, making me lose...

My mentor gave me some leftover rough when he taught me, to include a small piece of lab sapphire. I wanted to try something more complex than the Andrew Brown cuts I was doing, so I found a round cut that looked fun and relatively easy, and it was conveniently already designed for sapphire. (Also it sparkled very pretty in Gem...