Barion Heart – Transplant

[Frankwood]

Have finish cutting the Barion Heart and got it sent away a few days ago. International mail is terrible here in OZ with the current situation, so need to give plenty of time for delivery.
Had a difficult time trying to get the girdle set at +or- 0.1mm by cutting the breaks first, don’t have an accurate digital protractor on my machine for the breaks.
So gave up and created my own cutting sequence. Getting an accurate stone size straight after the mains is the only way I’m going to get it.

Cut P2 at the girdle indexes to an accurate point, then cut the girdle. At this stage all the girdle indexes are the same height bar 48, the index settings create the heart shape. Any cheater settings needed to level the girdle will need to be spot on your going to need it.
The junction of G5 and G6 create the width and cutting G1 deeper the height, cutting them all to a pre-polish. At this stage you will notice that G2 is now smaller than G3.
Cut P2 to its own indexes to a point, I use a worn 1200 grit before pre-polish, so cut them to that. Then back to 3000 on a BATT lap to finish the girdle.
I have a desk computer next to my faceting machine, so I could blow the size of the pavilion picture up to make it easy for me to see the individual girdle facet sizes. As I said before G2 needs to be cut deeper to make it the same size as G3, there is also another pair of girdle facets not the right depth, G7. If you measure them from the centre of the stone on the computer screen you will see they are deeper then the rest of them.

Well that’s the easy bit over with. Now cut P1 to a point and 1mm from the girdle, this 1mm variation will alter the break angles, as at the moment you won’t have a clue as to what they are.
At this stage those guys with those fancy digital angle gauges will probably think this is a joke.
Starting at P3 and working round each side of the stone as the instructions say, feeling the facet height in to suit the girdle and P1. I cut these with my worn 1200 grit so they were spot on as I went round. Cut P14 after P9 so I could maintain the girdle sequence. As I said before any cheater setting needed to get an accurate girdle will be needed. Because your working round each side of the stone and any accumulative error will show up at P12.
Then cut P15. So that’s it, hope that’s a help.

[davidechols]

Best of luck Frank. I am sure it will be a worthy stone.

[Alan Balmer]

Thanks for the description of your modifications to the sequence and the reasoning behind them. A good reminder that the goal is the product, not the process.

[Eric Hoffman]

Nice write-up!

Now that the USFG has moved to 0.5mm girdles (yay), it’s easier to measure them with a piece of wire. Well, unless your wire is measured in square millimeters haha, but I think jewelry wire is still sold with Brown & Sharpe (American Wire Gauge in the States) designations in Australia. 24 gauge wire is 0.511mm wide. Your upper & lower limits could be 23g (0.573mm) and 26g (0.405mm), but odd sizes are not common. If you want to know when you’re “getting close” and need to stop with your cutting grit, you could use 18g (1.02mm).

B&S/AWG wire gauge doubles in width every 6 sizes, so if you remember that 18g is about 1mm, you can remember that 24g is half that, 12g is double that (2mm), etc.

[Frankwood]

Just realised I’ve missed a vital detail on my post, it’s 12mm wide + or – 0.1mm.
Barion Heart Transplant has to be 12mm wide at the point where facets P8, P9, P14, G5 and G6 meet. The instructions have you cutting the P facets first and the intersection where they meet is out in space and can’t be accurately measured from one side of the stone to the other. Plus your restricted as to how deep you can cut them because you have already cut P1 and P2. Way beyond my limited mental capacity to figure it out so changed the cutting sequence.

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