Faceting

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

Rough and Synthetics

• Joe Henley Rough - Natural and Synthetics (US)
• Turtle's Hoard - Synthetics (US)
• Tom's Box of Rocks - Synthetics (US)
• Western Gem - Natural (US)
• Gems of East Africa - Natural (EU)

Lapidary Supplies

• Lightning Laps - Laps, Polishes and Tools

Designs

• facetdiagrams.org
• The Gemology Project

Ultratec

• Adjust swing alignment on platen - Does your stone cut deeper on the outside vs inside of the lap? This will help fix that.

I decided to try faceting an x-cube! X-cubes are basically fancy glass, so the material itself has little value, but the crazy colors they throw around when faceted really make them a fun material to experiment with.

For those curious, I oriented the X on my girdle, at 96 and 48.

Here is the link to the still photo

And here's a photo of the original material

Material: x-cube (dichroic glass) Measurements: 5.990 ct, 12.47 mm x 12.41 mm Design: Heart of Nines by Robert Strickland

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.

Design is "Green Lion" by Scott Laborie - several other faceters had been talking about this design as one of their favorites and after cutting it, I can see why! Strongly recommended by me now as well :) 24.0 cts, 19.6 x 12.7 mm

(Only one Jolly Rancher was harmed in the making of this photo op)

Spinny video can be found here, if you want to see it in sparkly action (and a nice proportionate girdle): https://pxlmo.com/p/meggied90/675122420686447993

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!

I finally have a gem that is showcased better as a still photo than a video. 🤯

5.94 cts, 10.78mm

Design (unfrosted) is Sparkle Six by Wayne Emery (can be found on the USFG website)

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!

!square blue gemstone sitting in the nook of a tree

12.3 cts, 12.4mm, design is Jumper by Arya Akhavan. The rough was acquired from Tom's Box of Rocks.

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 know, I know - FAT GIRDLE. It doesn't look so comically big on the dop, I swear my camera adds 0.1 mm!

7.98 mm, 2.84 cts, design is Mind Games by Arya Akhavan

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!

While taking my video I notice my table polish has an annoying streak across it at just the exact right angle of light. I polished the hell out of that table using my BATT lap and 60k Pandimonium - so how did I accidentally create this streaking? Did the lap need more lubricant maybe? Or not enough 60k? Or too much...? Argh!

Design is Superpear 96 by Robert Long & Norm Steele

12 x 9.3 mm, 7.7 cts

Synthetic corundum (sapphire)

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.

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Nothing I could do, so decided to finish the stone and hope it held together. Here is another view of the pavilion.

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I like the color, too bad the light return wasn’t what I was looking for.

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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.

I'm going to cut a second calibrated to match, and get them set for my wife.

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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.

He sliced the emerald in half and gave me one half while he cut his up into the sizes he was going to facet.

I was mostly hands off with this and only really helped out when his stone popped off the dop. He did a great job!

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.

The perfectionist in me was pissed and frustrated and I walked away from the stone leaving it on the machine. I was forced to finish the stone thanks to my son who was planning on cutting a hydrothermal emerald. So I finished the stone, and you can’t even see the flaw without a loop.

I’m such an idiot and am so thankful that my son gave me a swift kick in the ass.

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.

A few months back I was at a gem show, and a vendor was selling large bags of amethyst stones for very cheap, as she thought they were all unusable junk. I bought the lot and I don't agree with the vendor - I think about half the stones do have facet material in them, they just need some trimming.

This stone is one of those "junk" amethysts, after removing the cloudy parts of it. There is one inclusion you can see in the video: as it rotates away there is a line that looks like a hair inside the top right corner. I consider it a pretty trivial inclusion, since you can barely see it straight on.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo of the stone before cutting off the cloudy parts. Here is an example of some other rocks from the bag that I think might have hidden potential too (ignore the silver sharpie on some): !9 translucent rocks ranging from clear to purple, held in someone's left palm

(Sorry not sorry for the Skyrim reference in the title, I just picked the game up again after a long hiatus and it seemed fitting.)

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

This tiny beauty has quite a few mistakes in it, if you look past the pretty sparkles.

As soon as I started cutting the crown, the thing flew off my dop and clear across the room! The landing caused some minor chips on the pavilion, one of which is extremely obvious in the video.

I did my best trying to realign the thing but it took several attempts, and even with my best effort it was not quite right. My girdle is not level, and several of my meet points don't actually meet.

I wanted to share this one so any other newbs or aspiring faceters don't feel intimidated by all of our beautiful cuts - we make mistakes too! Sometimes many of them all at once, and we spend hours coming up with as many curse words as we can think of while we're trying to fix them! But even this dumpster fire turned out rather pretty, all things considered. :)

And when I say this thing is tiny, I really mean it. American penny for scale: !tiny orange triangle about three times the height of a penny

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.

I don't know what kind of jewelry setting she's going to put it in but knowing her, it'll be beautifully ostentatious and she'll be showing it off for the next twenty years at least!

I bought myself one of those macro lenses to try to get better photos and goodness, those things are unforgiving! My polish looked fine to the naked eye but the macro lens had no hesitation showing me every streak I didn't perfectly polish out. Guess I need to spend more time on my final polish - and y'all get more videos without the macro lens for now so I can hide my shame. 😂

Cubic zirconia, 14.130 carats, design is Gram Princess by Jeff Graham.

Edit: here is a photo of it beside my hand, for better scale: https://pxlmo.com/p/meggied90/637487568069056822

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).

And a quick THANK YOU to this community for pushing me to get that 3k lightning lap - quartz and I are finally getting along thanks to your advice, as you can see from this beauty.

THE BACKSTORY

My grandfather was a hobby gemcutter, and passed away over 20 years ago. When my grandmother finally passed a few years ago and we were clearing the estate, we found several cut stones of his left behind and divided them across the family - and I inherited 3 square-cut citrines.

Last year my partner proposed, and we set our wedding date for November 12, 2023 (yes next week! aaah!). I decided I would commission those citrines into a pendant as my "something old" and "something new", and a way to symbolically have my grandfather at my wedding.

After I had gotten the pendant back and was showing it to a friend, they pointed out to me that citrine is November's birthstone, the same month I chose for our wedding... which was a wonderfully spooky coincidence.

My dad is generously paying for our venue, and he has no idea I have started to cut gems like his father used to do. I plan on surprising him by giving him his own square citrine, cut by me, as a thank you for his generosity and for attending. I intentionally chose a princess cut since, after all, I am his little princess. :)

I can't post my gem anywhere on social media lest my family see it and spoil the surprise, but I know none of them use Lemmy so here I am, sharing with you all!

(side note: handling my grandfather's stones and seeing that beautiful pendant is what spurred me to finally learn to cut my own, so there's my origin story too.)

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 most of the girdle.

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 Cad Studio)

I'm extremely happy with my meet points on this, and it's my first where there's no mistakes! And my girdle is 0.43mm! I'm quite proud of this stone.

Seeing the final stone for the first time was an incredible experience, I forgot how to breathe when I first saw it off the dop. I hope seeing a final gem is always so exhilarating (don't tell me if it gets old 🤣)

Synthetic sapphire, 1.3 cts, design is Gamma Brilliant by Jeff Ford (I got it from the USFG website)

I’ve been looking at this large morganite rough and trying to decide how to cut this. It’s sort of in the shape of a triangular prism, but it narrows towards one end.

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I was leaning towards slicing it in three and creating a matching set of trillian stones. The other alternative I’m contemplating is a matching set of square/princess cut stones optimized for this stone.

Interested if anyone has some other alternatives or opinions.

To celebrate a year of doing the most expensive hobby ever, I tried my hand at doing a Portuguese cut. Sadly the veils weren't obvious until I started cutting, but I hate throwing things away so I just followed through to the end. Design is Round Portuguese Cut by Justin K. Prim, in amethyst

I cut my first peridot and I gotta say, much easier than the quartz by a mile. My confidence needed that boost. 🤣

I noticed when I googled the best way to polish peridot, there was quite a bit of debate in what was best, and no real clear right answer. I saw 100k diamond on a BATT lap, aluminum oxide, and chrome oxide all suggested. I tried the aluminum and it did okay, but took ages. What do you guys prefer?

(I have been advised my girdles are a smidgen too thick and I'll be putting my future stones on a diet. Whoops.)

Peridot, 2.795 ct, cut in DecaCheck Two by Andrew Brown

I feel like the garnet I cut first lulled me into a false sense of security. I did myself no favors picking a more complex cut, either. Quartz is ANNOYING!

The video mercifully does not show it, but my meetpoints are absolute trash on this stone. I used way too much force and popped it off the dop when polishing my pavilion, so my girdle and my crown don't quite align either.

I struggled heavily with the prepolish step, which in turn led to my polish taking ages. I'm currently using a Zinc+ with 8k Pandimonium which was dreamy on my garnet but the quartz was less enthusiastic about it. Am I just underestimating quartz? What do you guys use for prepolishing?

I just received my v5 last week and I've been working on my very first stone. Technically this is my second, but I FUBARed the first one beyond salvation so this one is my first "completed" stone.

It's a very included garnet, gifted to me by my teacher for practice. The design is Andrew Brown's Little Princess cut.

I'm experimenting with linking videos hosted on Pixelfed because in all honesty my gemstone photo skills suck and don't do this pretty little stone justice quite like the video does.

My first scapolite, in Trioptic Blast by Andrew Brown. I was expecting a lot more trouble with this, due to cleavage planes, but it was actually a joy to cut

Bit of an experimental one, in my own design. Chunky bloodstone, cut from my stock of cabbing stuff. This guy decided to yeet off of the dop, but I managed to save it with superglue. Still, it's made the table a touch wonky.

So finally got this stone done and am super happy with how it came out. A nice clean stone with great color and light return.

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Only had an hour this morning to work on the stone. Pre-polish is done, and still need to do the table.

Overall I’m really happy with how this stone is turning out.

Transferred and roughed in most of the main crown facets. I’m taking my time with this one, as it’s pretty large and almost perfectly clean.

And yes… it does look like a jolly rancher. 😋

Got halfway done with the peridot. Family conspired to limit my cutting time. 😉😂

Here it is after prepolish.

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Another £1 special, a super cracked bit of topaz that actually polished up real nice. Design is Round Brilliant by Justin K. Prim.

Teeny tiny peridot. It was a very cheap bit of rough for around £1, so I'm amazed I managed to get anything out of it at all. Still, I'm happy with the result and have a bit more experience with stuff that needs Aluminium Oxide to polish. Design is Emerald by Justin K. Prim

A heavily included bit of green tourmaline (my first!) in a simple square cut. You can see the different colours through different angles, which I didn't realise before I cut it! Design is Square Cut by Justin K. Prim