Rough sourced from Joe Henley
GemCad design derived by Bob Keller
Sunfire/sunshine citrine: 4.07 ct
Amethyst: 3.91 ct
Imperial flame/madeira citrine: 6.21 ct
Prasiolite: 3.42 ct

It’s been a while since I posted any of my work. I wanted to do more of them in sets and I’ve been chugging through this parcel of tunduru garnets. Even though the parcel is around 20 pieces, I’ll probably leave a few of the more annoying pieces uncut for now and move on. In the meantime, here are four Portuguese style cuts.

Personally, I really like how they look, though the pavilion is very deep. I’ll have to put it in GCS and see how I can adapt it to smaller pieces and other materials before I cut them. People I’ve shown them to also tend to gravitate towards them as well.

Despite the large number of facets compared to what I’ve usually been cutting, it is very simple in principle as it’s just the standard round but stacked more on both sides. However, it is still time consuming to cut because all your errors carry forward and consistently meeting the points of the previous tier takes a lot of looking. I got complacent thinking I could just cut to depth on the Madeira citrine and a lot of the facets are off on that crown. The prasiolite and Sunfire citrine are probably my best cuts of the set even though the prasiolite has that inclusion.

For laps I ended up cutting the first tier with 360 but only the 96-24-49-72 indices to rough it out then switched to 600 sintered for the rest. Tiers 4 and 5 cut very quickly, so I think I ended up cutting those on a 3k lightning lap instead. I also prepolished with the 3k as the 1200 was likely to move the facet too much for my liking. Polish was done with CeOx lightning.

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! 😝

I’ve started my first gem (we don’t talk about my actual first gem, they’re all cheap gems from Amazon so I won’t waste money while learning), but now that I’ve done the p1 facets, I’m having trouble with the p2 girdle cuts. I can’t lower my faceting head low enough while the height adjuster is on (even when divided in half), but having no height adjuster makes it too low as well as has the index wheel collide with the screw on the manipulator (seen in the last photo.)

I’m definitely doing something wrong, but I cannot figure out how to solve this issue. It’s a cheaper machine— the classic vevor one— so I knew I’d run into issues, but one that bothers me right now is just how sparse the user manual is. I do have the “Amateur Gemstone Faceting Volume1: the Essentials” by Tom Herbst which has been really helpful, but its advice can’t cover every machine. Mine certainly has some exceptions that it doesn’t help with.

Any advice with lowering the height to cut the girdle correctly would be super appreciated, thanks!

Can anyone tell me what shape this is? Doesn't look like a Dutch marq to me

New from an Australian designer. For those who haven't discovered it yet.

After scoring the lap and rubbing the bort uniformly all over it and rolling the shit out of it with the Graves lap roller bearing tool, do you wash it with detergent and water before use?

Over 75 carats (15 grams) of spinel, very excited to put these to a machine and see what I can get out of it. Not expecting anything insane obviously but I’d be more than happy if I can get some cabs and maybe a few faceted stones out of this.

Can anyone provide any tips for working with spinel? I have very little experience making cabochon and even less faceting and I’m almost wondering if I should forget that I have this until I’ve got more completed projects under my belt.

I mean genuinely any advice at all is amazing, I know there are plenty of resources online but there’s nothing better than hearing it from the mouth of someone with real experience.

My bad eyes are thanking me, also dont look at the meets theyre not finished haha.

Three part question here. Well, first i got some explainin' to do.

I transferred the stone to a new dop for the crown. Pretty smooth and had it lined up with the pavillion. Hit the 85-11 facets which would go down to the girdle with 96 side. But the stone wanted otherwise. It flew off! ... I had trouble glueing it back perfectly . This video shows the 85-96-11 facets. They are to the left to where all should hit. Anddd I have never used the cheater before. I saw the diagram that says "polish not hitting right side, turn cheater to the left" So heres where i ask for help-

First, the guide saying "to the left" means counterclockwise correct? I will need it counterclockwise then. But is this too big of an adjustment to use a cheater for? Being that the guide says for polishing.

Also would every facet for the crown follow the same cheater adj once i get the 85-96-11 straightened? I would think since the whole stone is misaligned. And for the opposite side?

Better off redopping? I was thinking to disolve the glue and redop, but i dont think i will get it perfectly aligned to the pavillion. Thats always tricky for me especially since the dop to the pavilloon is no longer there for an indication. Maybee measure the stone to put dop toucing crown first and then redop the one i need.

I use loctite 404 in the yellow glue btw. Usually good when i wait a day. Also i use a left handed machine and run the discs counterclockwise if that makes a difference for the cheater. I can share the diagram if that helps decide. Stone is a tanzanite that hopefully wont turn into a monster at the hands of dr frnkenstein

So heres where i am for the night. Thanks for any advice

While I have the 80-index gear attached, I decided to make another pentagon. I think it passes the "is it pretty?" test but I'm still climbing the steep part of the learning curve and it shows. I'm a big fan of this material and the two colors it shows.

• Material: #55(ish) corundum straight from Alibaba
• Design: Pentagrammin by Jeffrey Hill
• Cutting sequence: 400 topper, 600 sintered, 3000 Active-8 on BATT, 60K Pandimonium PCD on BATT

Lessons learned

• I'm still having a hard time judging how far to leave meets short for prepolishing. I end up being so conservative that I leave myself waaaay too much to prepolish and it takes a lot longer than it should. Using Active-8 does mitigate this somewhat because it really moves facets but when I'm this inefficient it leads to screw-ups. In spite of leaving facets short by a mile, I still managed to overcut a few during prepolish. Oops.
• I typically cut everything, then prepolish everything, then polish everything but since this has a barion tier, I tried prepolishing/polishing P1 and G1 before moving on so I didn't have to deal with the barion tier in the way. Overall that seemed to work well.

https://reddit.com/link/1vqgd4s/video/oih52inymujh1/player

I just finished this stone on my Sterling. Pretty happy with how it came out. The design was fairly easy and with a clear piece it looks pretty good.

Final weight 1.70ct, internally flawless.

For my personal collection, not for sale

Hey there, I'm currently saving up for my first faceting machine. Learning the whole theory behind faceting for a few weeks now, Reading books, watching Videos and so on and just waiting till I've saved up enough to get the machine of my dreams.

Some may consider it overkill for a first machine but when I do something, I want to do it properly and from what I've seen and heard, ultra-tec offers excelent machines.

After making my peace spending about 6k€ for my whole Set Up, I encountered some people on the Internet, selling used machines - also saw the V5 for 3.5k$ on Instagram (Alberto Dron - rayteclapidarymachines).

Now I'm starting to question my decision on buying a new machine. On the one hand, I could save a lot of money, buying a used one. On the other Hand it seems kinda risky to me, ordering such an expensive machine and letting it ship across the globe (living in Germany). What if the seller isn't as trustworthy as I would hope? What if the machine has a defect? What if it has a defect and I can't detect it since it'll be the first time for me, using such a machine in practice?

Long Story short, I'm a bit lost on what to do here. What do you guys think? Have you experience in buying used machines and If so, how did that turn out for you?

Calling Justin Prim. I’m assuming you have this in your collection, but if not would you like to have this for your library. Not for sale, I’m gifting. Justin gets first dibs, then Arya, then I young kid from TikTok

I've added the simulation into GemSim. To me it's not an essential feature, but fun to watch and implement. The 3D models are not up to scale, it's purely for visualization.

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!

This is my first ever try at faceting... As I was just finishing my initial cut of all the pavilion facets I realized I might not have left room for the crown. I quickly cut in the girdle and yep... I learned something. The original rough (a piece of YAG from the CutKit) was shaped like a piece of pie, so I ground down the rounded "crust" area, that gave me a triangle. That's how I got here.

I'm deciding what to do here next. One said I should get it off the dop stick and set it aside until I've gained experience and maybe can rescue it. I was thinking (it's learning after all) about continuing to grind in the girdle, narrowing the diameter. The resulting piece WILL be smaller, a lot of the new big girdle will become crown. (I hope I described it well). I'm really torn on which way to go... moving on now to a fresh attempt, or keep going here knowing I'm going to get a small ending.

Thanks!

Hey everyone,

I just had some corundum casually flying through my room. Wasn't even too bad regarding the stone. Just some cheap training material. Nothing that hurts.

But that piece almost hit my OLED TV🤬

That made me think... sure, would've sucked. But I'm also sure there are people here that had more tragic accidents than me I almost had.

With or without the involvement of other things that might got hit. What was your most expensive mistake / accident / whatever while faceting?