When I'm cutting a barion oval for the first time in a while. I meticulously cut 8 pavilion tiers and 2 girdle tiers. G3 is the first girdle tier to meet the barion cut, yet I'm blind and an idiot and wonder why the girdle looks slanted. Go back to P7 to 'level' it out and realize I deleted the edge of the barion facet by 110 miles. That grinds my gemstones. The mocking may commence! 😝
Here's my latest work in blue Helenite. The pavilion is a Portuguese Cut and the crown is an SRB with an added step cut c4 tier to help make the table a little smaller.
I've been practicing with wax dopping and it came off during the pavilion when the quill slipped from my fingers and landed hard on the lap.
I've been using UV resin for the transfer and like that the wax lets go with just a little heat. I don't like the wet towel wrap and pliers method for getting glued dops off for the transfer. The wax then UV glue method seems to work well so far.
I've been doing it that way because I've had issues with the wax letting go of the polished surface of the pavilion after transfer. The glue doesn't seem to do that. The biggest downside is the overnight acetone bath it needs. I want to see my stone NOW!
There's not anything super fancy about this stone other than my attempt at making rather small stones. I know 6mm isn't super small, but it still presents challenges keeping it from coming off the dop. I did black wax for the pavilion and UV resin for the crown. Being able to remove the initial dop with low heat was great. Previously I've been snapping off the transfer dop when using glue for small stones. Very frustrating! Ive been trying to perfect the wax method with mixed results. It's mostly taught me to not be so heavy handed while cutting.
This was the other piece of Helenite that I cut the Emerald Isle stone from. The Portuguese pavilion and SRB crown really sparkle. I watched Dan Lynch cut a garnet like this at the faceting symposium in Franklin a few weeks ago. He did it in less than one hour from start to finish. And he had issues with the stone shifting in the quill. He was using someone else's machine and the collet worked a bit different than he was used to. In any case, it was impressive to watch. Turns out I had the same or very similar diagram from one of my school stones so I gave it a go.
This was my first attempt at a rounded girdle. I learned that I don't really care for them all that much. This one is also a little on the thick size to boot. Is there any advantage to a rounded girdle over a faceted girdle? Perhaps it's just preference or ease of setting for the bench jeweler.
It's been a while (again) since I posted some cuts. This is the Emerald Isle Cut done in green Helenite aka glass. I really like this cut, but I need to adjust the cutting order. On the diagram is has notes saying to meet a point that isn't cut yet. By ignoring that and meeting with the other points in the notes it caused the l/w ratio to be a bit off. It shows on the corner cuts on the crown. It needs to be a smidge longer. Still looks great to an untrained eye though!
My latest piece. As I was cutting the veils started becoming much more apparent. There is a large one running almost down the middle and some smaller ones on the edges. I think the smaller ones are worse as it makes the stone look dirty when the surface is clean.
I am trying to start a YouTube channel and this was intended to be the first video. I ended up just trying a bunch of different recording angles with the limited equipment I have. I wasn't happy with the one that I did most of the recording with, blah blah blah....hopefully the next one!
In any case, this turned out to be 13mm and 6.25 carats. Despite the veils sort of ruining it for me, I think the cutting turned out really nice. The meetpoints are all pretty much spot on. I think I'll pick a nice clean synthetic piece for my first video so I'm not fighting inclusions and weird reflections the whole time!
It's been a little while since I've posted some of my work, but I've still been cutting. This one is a design called William's Miniature by Arya Arkhaven. After recently cutting lots of quartz, I needed a cooperative stone and YAG always meets those needs. It cuts and polishes with a minimum of fuss. Plus no table on this one for an added bonus.
My cutting sequence for this stone was as follows 260 topper>600 sintered>3k Batt Lap>AlOx Darkside Lap. I found I did most of the fine tuning on the 3k step. The final polish with AlOx took only a few seconds on each facet. Did I mention YAG is very cooperative?
This design is pretty straightforward and the only tricky bit is getting the girdle level. C1 and C2 both level the girdle and are cut in pairs at 2 different angles. I usually attempt cutting each tier individually to depth at first. I've never been able to get that exactly right and end up switching between the two tiers to cut each pair of facets next to each other so that I can level the girdle all the way around rather than 'fill in the gaps'
Also, leave a some extra material on the crown as it is pretty tall and requires more material than many designs with tables.
As always, the video never quite does it justice. This one has lots of fire.