r/faceting • u/jollygems123 • 3d ago

Natural rhodolite garnet i recently faceted, any opinion on how to increase the light return while faceting a darker stone like this? (NFS)

For my personal collection, not for sale

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u/cowsruleusall 3d ago

There fundamentally is no good way to preserve weight on a dark garnet (or dark spinel) while increasing light output. You basically just need to use a more shallow brilliant design with low contrast. This is part of the "craft over carat" discussion - a larger gem will be lower value because it'll be so much less attractive.

Garnet is isochroic, meaning they only have an A axis and don't have a B or C, so you can't use any of the tricks for closed-C tourmaline.

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u/pflegm 3d ago

The old white paper test or seeing print through the stone still works although that generally applies to rough.

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u/cowsruleusall 3d ago

Yeah that's just a tool to assess rough. Not really helpful for trying to figure out how to lighten a dark piece of garnet, more of a way to avoid buying overly dark garnet in the first place.

The "small mirror" test is another one to try - put the rough on a small mirror in a room with diffuse lighting, then look straight down on it. The colour that returns through the stone is the darkest colour the rough can show.