3 years, 3 months ago-
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I cut my first stone! Pic below. It’s a 7 mm triangle barion, 1.7 cts (rough was 6.4 cts). It was a AAA clean piece of rhodolite rough and there’s nothing wrong inside, but it’s got a skinny, irregular girdle (my dop was too small when I tried to go back and thicken it – just cut brass) and a 1 mm concoidal chip on one corner break facet. The polish isn’t close to perfect at 10x but no frosting or scratches visible to the untrained eye.
I decided to call it a day, happy with the sparkles, happy with a first effort even knowing the flaws, ready to do better on stone #2.
But the first person I showed it to wants to buy it. I told him it’s not perfect but he doesn’t care.
I can dop it on a 3mm cone dop and thicken the girdle without messing up the appearance because of the design, but I can’t get rid of the chip without recutting the crown at a low enough angle that the appearance will suffer.
My impulse is to thicken the girdle and do my best to drive the chip farther to the corner where the setting will cover it, make my full disclosure and sell it with a buy back promise if his jeweler doesn’t like it. Does that sound reasonable?
Nice stone.
If he wants to buy it as it is and your offering to take it back I wouldn’t worry about the chip. Let the man have it.
You will find it a lot easier to learn to facet using Quartz. It’s cheap and easy to cut and polish.Congratulations on your first cut. It looks much nicer than my first for sure, and I’m positive you learned a lot.
I agree with Frank above. Quartz is ideal for learning the craft, and decent rough is certainly cheap enough. I recommend cutting several round brilliants to hone your skills.
As far as selling it goes, if he wants to buy it go ahead and sell it to him. I suggest you don’t attempt a re-cut though. You might find that you’re just going down a rabbit hole and lose the beauty of the cut as it is.
Thanks! I sure did learn a lot. I don’t mind that I cut exactly what I wanted — a pretty trillion rhodolite — but I’m following the good advice from both of you to cut quartz now for a while. I’m going to practice the novice and pre-master competition cuts in amethyst and citrine till I can do those well, because the criteria for judging are clear and I can evaluate myself. I’ve got some good rough squirreled away and when I get back to it I hope to do it justice.
Cutting those two competition stones is a good idea, as well as following Lowjiber’s advice and cutting a few standard brilliants.
If your happy with how your stones look under a 10x loupe then enter the competition, you will learn a lot from the judges comments.While quartz is cheap, I do not agree that’s its the easiest stone to learn on… quartz can certainly give one difficulty in polishing. I would recommend topaz and learning to polish on a batt lap with diamond. Quartz is nearly in one of its own categories when it comes to polishing, and the old “beginners” stone just doesn’t make sense anymore. Leave quartz, cerium or zirconia and the “hopefully” darkside lap for when you’ve learned to enjoy the basics of cutting and polishing with standard diamond. Preferably diasticks from Gearloose and his batt lap. Just my 2 cent, but supported by many that teach today.
Ok, so I should get a BAT lap for polishing and some 50,000 diamond?
And what should I use for pre-polish? Seems like people use 3000k on a Darkside?
Can I still cut on a 600 plated lap, or should I cut with 600 diamond powder on a Darkside?
right now I’m cutting on a generic chinese 600 plated lap, then prepolishing with a 600 NuBond which someone told me cuts like a 1200, then polishing on a Greenway lap which is a Gearloose lap that is a chrome oxide composite lap.
I have some big clean tumbled topaz pebbles I can cut (clear and very slightly smokey) — I thought it was hard to cut because of cleavage? It wasn’t on my radar.
Don’t put 3000 diamond on your Darkside lap, once it’s on their it’s there to stay.
All stones that polish with diamond and there’s heaps of them, will pre polish on a Batt lap with 3000 and produce a brilliant polish on a second Batt lap with 50 or 60k diamond.
Don’t bother with Diastik’s their to slow, use diamond powder and baby oil. On the 3000 lap use 2 drops only of baby oil and rub the powder oil mix around the lap with your finger. Wash your hands thoroughly afterwards. Run the lap at about 300rpm and put a little bit of pressure on the stone.
You don’t want to much speed or baby oil on the lap because you want the oil/diamond mix to stay on the lap.Yes Quartz is not a beginners friend in any way but for the cost and availability. Most new comers to faceting struggle out of the gate when it comes to polishing quartz, especially when using cheap plated laps. 3k or 8k diamond powder on a batt lap or the new TinPlus at the prepolish stage on most all materials will alleviate the frustration in learning good polishing techniques. Topaz cleavage is not a great issue when it comes to faceting very seldom will you find yourself on the basil cleavage in topaz.
Thanks for all the great advice. I’ve got some largish clear topaz pebbles I can make a pass at. I’ve also got a big poorly polished synthetic spinel round brilliant that I can use as a preform. I’ll just keep cutting away, and get a Batt lap or two as soon as I can. Thanks again!
p.s. I sold him the stone and he loves it.
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