Scottwkelley: Agreed to the chipping issue. My plan on the design was to do one copy in a lab created amethyst cabachon I bought to recut as a practice run and started on the Pavillion side.
I cut the first six facets to as good a culet as I could. I went onto the girdle and cut and polished that and went back and polished the first six facets before doing the last three on that side. When polishing the six facets I noticed some chipping on some of the edges but also a couple of spots that liked as if chips were jettisoned out of the stone.
I don’t believe I hit the stone and am certain that they were not there a moment earlier because I was inspecting progress on this cat hair I was polishing out of the facet and one minute the surface was pristine except for the one scratch and the next thing I know I have three or four chips.
I had already noticed several chips in tbe corners of the girdle facets that would later be cut out during the construction of the crown so I ignored them but it made me recognize that the design is prone to these chips in general. I don’t know if the specific piece if material I was cutting could have been fragile in some way but it did seem vulnerable to chipping and the most severe damage was in those three girdle corners.
I’m still working on the crown of that first piece. I had hoped to cut it so well that I could submit it if something went wrong with the next copy I did, but I don’t trust the material now for anything other than to work out bugs and to use for my dry run.