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!
