Is the book Faceting for Amateurs worthwhile?

[drsue]

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[gemmakermz]

if you can find a copy affordable,yes i have one personally autographed, signed by him and his wife i knew them. if you can find an old timer faceter thats willing to teach you that would help. toobad your not in my area i teach for free and after one or two lessons you’ll be cutting on your own doing well.

[Lowjiber]

I have the first & second editions of the Vargas book.

While Glen & Martha set the standard for general reference faceter books, I’ve found the two-volume set of books entitled, “Amatuer Gemstone Faceting” by Tom Herbst to be a little more modern and frankly filled with more real information for the beginner.

Both volumes are available from Amazon for around $28 each.

[loydblankenship]

Here’s a second for Tom’s books. The Vargas books are mostly historical oddities at this point.

[glennklein]

Is the book “FACETING FOR AMATEURS” worthwhile? I certainly would say yes to this question. Glenn Vargas’s book is how I learned to facet. There was no one around to teach faceting at the time and the few booklets around did not offer much information. Faceting for Amateurs covers such a great amount of areas that I think any faceter would find useful, even at the present time. His book was my bible. I believe that Glenn and Martha Vargas taught more students in the whole world, when they taught at the Texas University in Austin and in the desert near Palm Springs, California.

I have always had the habit of circling parts of the books paragraphs I read so that I could easily review the important things I needed to be able to pass tests in school. I told Glenn Vargas about this one time and his reaction was that “FINE, I will send you another copy so that your can circle some more paragraphs”. He gave me the book along with his autograph. Later I bought another copy. But now the first and third copies along with the free copy are in the library at the FACETERS MUSEUM in Jacksonville, Florida along with my Library of faceting related books that I also donated to the Museum.

[York27]

I got the 4th edition of that book from Amazon for around $250, and I use it for almost every stone (generally the suggestion on critical angles/crown/pavilion angles). I did read through the book, however most of this information is available online however if you so desire, so from that perspective it is not “required”. It still does have good information for reading.

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