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2018 Single Stone Competition Questions/Comments
Hi all:
I’m wondering if we have any kind of update on when the designs for this year’s competition will be released? ozgurertan posted a question on this in December and I tried updating that thread but for some reason the site won’t allow me to reply so I’m starting a new one which can also be a place where people post questions about this year’s competition.
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23 Replies
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Hi there! I was just logging on to check out the designs. Thought they would have been put out in the 4th quarter newsletter? Second your question, what are this year’s designs? Thanks in advance!
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Al Balmer had announced on another thread (last year’s competition) that info. on the competition will be in the March newsletter.
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these people are the slow about anything…still waiting to find out about last competition…..
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The 2017 competition results have been posted in the newsletter. Considering the amount of work that goes into judging all those stones and the helpful feedback they provide, I think they do a good job.
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I agree. There is an immense amount of work to judge and provide feedback on the many many stones submitted. All by non paid people non the less. The new designs will be in the March Newsletter good lord willing and the creek don’t rise. As Mr. Brooker stated the results were posted in the December Newsletter.
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Hi All,
I was wondering the same thing, when will we have the designs for the 2018 single stone competition, since we here in Africa sometime need to order rough and the shipping can take up to 4 weeks to arrive, and that limits the time to facet your stone.
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Within a day or two, now.
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The March newsletter, with the competition diagrams, has been posted under Library->Newsletters.
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I am quite puzzled why a wonderful high RI design like the Kiev Triangle intended for RI 2.16 would be the Grand Master Stone in 2018 using Feldspar family materials. Frankly, by listing the CZ angles and an RI of 1.557 material, you have wasted a 12 mm Feldspar stone. The resulting stone windows and looks so bad most people will not want to show this stone to anyone unless they place high in their score. Even if one transposes the angles and “optimizes” this design, it’s not very nice performing. Large number of facets hides performance to a degree, but a better material should have been chosen with an RI closer to CZ.
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You may, of course, tangent ratio the design. The requirement is only that the plan view not change. As Jeff Theesfeld says in the cutting notes, the use of a softer material increases the difficulty. The Grand Master stone is supposed to be difficult.
Also, note that the Premaster stone, cut per the instructions, can be in two different forms, depending on which direction your index gear is numbered. (One is the mirror image of the other.) Either form is acceptable.
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Attention 2017-Certified Faceters
The Certified Faceter database has been updated. If you were certified after the 2017 Single Stone Competition, please click on Competition->Certified Faceters, enter your name (first, last, or both) in the search box, and check your entry. If you find an error, or your name is mis-spelled or out of order, please email it@usfacetersguild.org.
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Alan,
Do you expect that the Single Stone Competition page will get updated with the 2018 competition designs anytime soon?
While I cannot disagree with Dennis’ assessment/puzzlement with using Feldspar for the Kiev, I can only say that the rules state that materials will get changed up from year to year, and feldspar is one of the recommended materials for the Grand Master Class. Difficulty would be my guess as to why it was selected. It finished a pretty gem, and does not window as poorly as suggested, but not the prettiest I have seem by any means. -
I really wanted to find some natural Tibetanite, feldspar for this cut, but I have not been able to find any….bummer!
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Dennis Anderson raised the issue of using Feldspar as the Grand Master material in his post of March 25th. I would tend to agree that this choice of material would make it harder to show the stone off later if you are looking for sparkle but I have a question: does the stone have to be clear? Could we facet an opaque stone? Judges would still be able to discern meetpoints and polish and if we had some opaque feldspar material you would still have the challenge of faceting the softer material, you just wouldn’t get the sparkle from within the gem. Not sure I would even want to submit an opaque stone exactly but I have been contemplating a dark color like a tanzanite CZ for this year’s Master’s class.
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Jeff, we’re currently talking to our webmaster about updating the competition page.
Michael, that’s an interesting question! I don’t see anything in the rules that precludes an opaque stone.
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