As Told By Gems Evermore

Hi again. As I mentioned last time, I have faceted my first gem. The experience was satisfying, but disappointing at the same time. No surprises there, I was doing a lot of experimenting, trying to find techniques that would work for me. I think I was successful in the technique search, but the resulting gem, well, let us just say it won’t be winning any competitions.

For a start, I cut the stone just a hair too big, so one girdle corner is missing. I could have fixed that, but then I would have to recut the entire pavilion. I had already polished parts of the pavilion, and it was only a low-quality amethyst, and I had spent a couple of days getting that far, so I decided to just forge ahead. Probably says something about my character, but I was more interested in learning methods than perfect results, so there you are.

The next major flaw is the girdle is too thick. Another direct consequence of cutting the stone too large, made worse by my simple inexperience. I have a better idea of what to look for now, so I will do better in the future. Of course, with all that going on, there is no way that all the pavilion facets could meet in the right places, so a sharp eye can pick that out as well.

The final indignity came while cutting the table. An incautious swing of the quill while the lap was turning gouged out a nice deep scratch in the crown. If I had realized the girdle was so thick, I probably would have recut the crown to get rid of that. As it was, I ended up with an extra table facet because I used the wrong method to cut the table in the first place.

My faceting machine came with a special table cutting tool. Guess what? Its use is not optional! Apparently the quill can wobble too much to get a precise cut when it is set to zero degrees. The table tool is a rigid piece of metal, so it can’t wobble. It makes cutting the table easy, but you had best be done with the rest of the crown before you switch. Otherwise, resetting the dop in the quill will be something of a project.

The other major discovery was that a slurry is not a paste! A slurry is a lot of water with a barely detectable contamination by polishing agent. I spent hours and hours fruitlessly trying to achieve any sign of polish before tripping across that one. Where polishing agent is concerned, less truly is more!

I apologize for all the text and no pictures, but I have started a peridot that should come out looking rather nice, and I am taking pictures of every step. I will use them to help explain what I’m doing in later posts. With any luck some of it may even make sense!

To those of you who have been following my adventures, thank you! I apologize for not being more communicative, but with one thing and another, there just hasn’t been time to blog. For this installment, I depart from detailing the victories and defeats of an online gem seller to say a few words about the victories and defeats of a fledgling gem cutter.

Having been the proud but inactive owner of an inexpensive (yes, that means cheap!) faceting machine, a slab saw, a trim saw and a grinder for some time now, I have finally taken the plunge and tried my hand at both faceting and cabbing. Anyone with experience will tell you I am doing nearly everything wrong, but friends and neighbors, I believe I may be hooked!

After two or three abortive tries at cabbing, and another couple of attempts to facet, I worked out a technique to get a decent polish on an amethyst and keep the stones unbroken during the cabbing process. Three weeks is a long time to cut an amethyst of any size, but my first faceted stone will be coming off the dop tomorrow. It won’t win any awards, but I think it will be quite nice.

My 12-year-old son and I are competing to produce the best tiffany stone cabochon from some scrap material we can’t sell as rough. Those will be finished tomorrow as well. When they are done, I will post pictures. It’s all very exciting.

So, here we are, with a web host, a pile of cut gems, and a world full of consumers lusting after quality gemstones. All we need to do now is list the stones and try not to be overwhelmed by the orders pouring in, right? After all, every late-night infomercial related to internet sales assures us that we can make thousands of dollars per day while we bask in the Caribbean sun. They couldn’t say it on TV if it weren’t true, now could they?

The answers to those questions are: Wrong. And apparently they can.

The first and most obvious problem with our make-money-while-you-tan plan was in the gemstones themselves. Did you know that jewels are notoriously camera-shy? We do. Now, at least.

After confidently plopping our stones on our scanner, and making scan after scan with the stones in various positions, we decided that off-color bits of dirty plastic would probably not sell well. We turned to our trusty digital camera.

Guess what? The average trusty digital camera, while doing an excellent job recording the antics of children and dogs, doesn’t really have the resolution or color discrimination to shoot gems well. We got some fine-looking pictures of what looked like tiny lumps of colored plastic or hard candy, but very few that looked like the fine gemstones we were actually shooting.

After almost three months of experimentation, research, and consultation with photographer friends, we finally got some pictures that were, sort of, acceptable. Eager to begin reaping the fruits of our labors, we posted them, along with some pretty detailed descriptions of the gems.

Undoubtedly, our mistake was in failing to bask properly in the Caribbean sun. Actually, we never left home. Our website followed suit, languishing with fewer than 10 visitors per day, barely visible far back in the search engine listings. The thousands of dollars per day failed to make their promised appearance, and soon, we would have been thrilled with a couple of dollars per week.

“Curse you, late night infomercial hosts!” we cried. “You have deceived us!” I, personally, was especially disappointed in the duplicity of a certain pair of comely maidens who gave their sincerest assurances while leaning forward in their seats wearing scoop necked t-shirts. I mean, if you can’t trust a comely maiden in a scoop necked t-shirt, who can you trust? But I digress.
We discovered, and applied, some principles of Search Engine Optimization, which at least made us visible to the search engines. We spent money on paid search listings, which got us a few visitors, but fewer orders, and mostly just cost us money. We got a better camera and better lights, and found that we could improve our photos dramatically. We adjusted prices and improved descriptions, and added some information pages about our gems. Still the orders mostly declined to attend the party, but things were, beginning, very slowly, to look up.
We are still looking for more effective ways to promote our venture, and we are still improving our photographic technique, but most importantly, we are improving the quality of our gems and slowly expanding our services. Success in any venture comes from diligent work. Gems Evermore is intended to be something special. Now we just have to let the world in on our little secret.

You will soon realize that this is my first blog. Not to worry, I promise I will get better. Or not. Either way, I expect this will be an educational experience for me, and I hope it will be an entertaining one for you.

If you haven’t guessed already, my name is Steve, and I am at least partly responsible for the web store at http://store.gemsevermore.com. Credit for the store’s layout goes first to Yahoo! for providing the rather restrictive store template used. I can claim credit for setting up categories and listing the items for sale. My wife, Sue, has done a wonderful job choosing colors, designing graphics, and Doing Something About That Boring First Page! Let’s all give Sue a hand, I don’t pay her enough.

We started out with the usual fascination with gemstones and fine jewelry. We bought a lot of it at neighborhood jewelry stores. Then we noticed that both quality and price at those jewelry stores varied by quite a bit, but price seemed to be more related to the poshness of the digs than the quality of the wares. We started buying more at discount jewelry malls, until we found a jeweler whose work we really liked. Then we bought exclusively from him.

We took the news of his retirement last year with very mixed emotions. Happiness, because he is finally getting a well-earned rest. Sadness, because he will no longer be available to make beautiful custom jewelry for us. Finally, betrayal, because we just can’t get the same rapport with the kid who took over his store. Oh, well, we will find another jeweler some day.

One of the things we liked about our jeweler friend was that he was honest and informative. I once spent over an hour just discussing the merits and marketing of Australian diamonds with him. I learned a very great deal from him, and bought more jewelry than I could really afford from him.

For better or worse, this relationship somehow instilled in me the confidence to go forth and seek to buy loose gemstones. We bought some really nice gems, and we bought some pigs, and we bought some parcels with a little of both in them. We quickly learned to tell the good from the bad, but since both our budget and our taste run to the relatively small, we ended up with a lot of stones at or below 1 carat each. This may be fine for a personal jewelry collection, but it is not the best thing for an internet gem seller, but more on that later.

Then, we got an ebay account, and discovered that there was money to be made, if not a lot, in selling melee diamonds there. We were able to acquire quite a few carats of 1-5 point diamonds, and we proceeded to parcel them up and offer them for bid on ebay. That worked out pretty well until ebay changed its price structure and we hit a dry spell at the same time.

We took a long hard look at what we were doing, and decided we didn’t want to peddle tiny diamonds forever. So, we closed up the ebay shop, gathered our collection of colored stones, and opened up a website that we called Gems Evermore.

And so it begins.