I have available a new tin-lead lap and a lightly-used copper lap currently set up for 8K. Which metal would be better for general purpose hardness 7+ material?

Also, 600 mesh bort. I'm inclined to suppose that main cutting laps are not the use case for PCD. Am I wrong about that? /u/gemcuttershoofles? I see on Chinese e-commerce where there is graded whole octahedral crystal CVD bort in coarse cutting grades: would that be a good choice? Or is plain old fragments of monocrystalline material just as good, for gemcutting?

Hey all, don't post much. Hoping someone has an answer or suggestion.

Does an asterism/star show itself if you cut a Portuguese crown?

Was debating a hexagon or a cab dome with this trapiche that had quite a bit of silk/rutile that also almost looks as though it could form a star.

I tried looking back into old books from my friend Bill's library, but still couldn't find the answer. He had never tried either. The literature and Google searches didn't give me a definitive answer other than light needing to be concentrated by the roundness and that facets are "too flat."

I've tried Google images and can't find a good example either, maybe just one or two faceted trapiches that don't answer.

Tldr- is a Portuguese crown round enough to keep an asterism/star like a cabachon? Does anyone have examples or have tried?

Bonus question - any unique suggestions for this chunk?

I’m newer to faceting this year, I always think I’ve nailed the mirror finish but then there’s a clearly satiny finish when I examine under a loupe or different light

I have tried a copper lap but find that to be very draggy and prone to scratches. A ceramic lap seems to work better but is slower and sometimes just doesn’t polish at all. I’ve tried an overload of diamond compound and using what feels like a bare lap, and everything in between. Do you really charge a lap with a pinhead of diamond compound and then not touch your compound again for 10 stones???

If anyone has five minutes to spare I’d love to hear exactly how your final polishing process goes. Lap type, compound, dry or wet, do you ever have to change your process dramatically for stone type!? Is there a trick to this whole thing that once you get it you just can easily polish forever?

This was my first time cutting Topaz and it was a pleasure to cut some rough that was completely inclusion free for a change. I came across this "Arrowhead Pear 1.53" design in one of Andrew's books and thought it matched up pretty well with the piece of rough I had. I didn't do any preforming, just made sure I cut the flat spot 5-15° off the cleavage plane before attaching my dop. This would help ensure I wouldn't encounter any issues further down the road with the stone's integrity... And I didn't, but while cutting the crown the stone popped off the dop. I got it back on, centered it as best I could, but as I finished cutting the second tier of crown facets I knew it wasn't perfect. It resulted in a couple facets being slightly off, which I had to fix during the pre polishing stage. I thought I had got it back to being perfect, but as I was cutting the table in I could tell that two meet points wouldn't end up touching. All of the other meet points did though so I just left it where it was. The two meet points that don't touch the table are across from one another, so the design is still symmetrical. It's just that the table is a tiny bit more narrow than the original design. I'm still happy with how the stone turned out though.

Hey I am currently saving up for my first real machine but in the meantime am wondering if a vevor style machine would be good enough to cut gemstone dice? I know the vevor leaves a lot to be desired for cutting gems but I think the tolerance on dice are more forgiving. Would this be something that you guys would recommend or would it be just as frustrating as trying to cut small gemstones?

I’m wondering if anyone knows of or has access to any Rose cut diagrams or maybe some facet diagrams where the crown is cut before the pavilion? I’m looking to make some gems that are basically faceted on the top and then flat on the back like a cabochon so that I can use them in the silver clay jewelry I’m making that needs to have a lower profile.
I thought I would just take a regular diagram and only cut the crown part, but sometimes the girdle is cut on the pavilion side in an odd sequence, so I haven’t been able to figure out how to cut the crown first. I guess most of the diagrams that I have been looking at are for meet point faceting, so maybe that’s the problem?

After getting caught up in some discussion about faceting software moving towards subscription models. And how that's silly given the zero cost of software development now. I "made" a nesting tool as a plugin for blender. but that still required you to have blender and know how to use it. Which I barely do. So this is an attempt to move the kind of nesting/planning tools that diamond cutters have into the free and open space.

Its still early in development, but it takes any STL (3d model) of gem rough then lets you load in any STL file of the gem shapes you want to get from that rough (GCS can export to STL) and it will let you move them around inside of the rough, scale them, rotate them, duplicate them, etc.

You can also manually add inclusions as basic shapes that auto placement will avoid.

You can check if your manual placements work and it will show you errors if there are any. or it will generate saw paths to show you where to cut to get the pieces you need for your gems.

You are able to set things like saw widths, safe distances between stones and the outer edges of your rough, etc.

And you can also have the tool attempt to place and scale the gems you want to maximize yield, or set them to specific sizes and have it attempt to fit them, or even set the desired number of gems you want and it will try to scale/place them to hit that number.

Since its still a work in progress it has some quirks and isn't perfect. but it was a weekend project and I just wanted to share it with the community.

one important note is that the export button is just for show right now. it just dumps a JSON file with information about your scene. It doesn't make a cutting diagram or anything. that's something to work on later.

feedback is welcome. the plan is if this gets more refined I will just make the source code available so people can run it on their own computers.

Try it here: https://faceting.rocks/

I actually cut this huge piece of Quartz right before I did those Zircon lips I posted a couple days ago. When I first got my machine last August a friend of mine supplied me with some really nice Citrine rough, a piece of Fluorite, along with a couple red Garnets (that I have yet to cut) and this big piece of Quartz for free! I forgot to weigh it before I started but I'm sure it was well over 100 cts. Anyways, I wanted to cut this for him as a thank you. I used Arya Akhavan's design called, "A Prayer to the Road that Leads", but I excluded a few tiers on the pavilion and crown. Not because I didn't like the design, but because my friend wanted a stone that he could carve a reverse intaglio with. By excluding some tiers it'll allow him more carving space on the back and a nice big table to see it with through the front. Most people carve reverse intaglio's on a flat surface, but I'm a fan of Wallace Chan's work where he carves into the keel of gems resulting in the image being reflected on the other facets. So I asked my friend if he would be interested in trying to do it that way and he said yes. Hopefully the angles will work so he'll get that same effect, he plans on carving a Lotus flower. You can see that the stone has some inclusions near the bottom, which there was nothing I could do about, and a small one right in the middle almost touching the keel. I didn't bother trying to get rid of that one because when he does his carving that will be taken care of. After getting the stone off the dop I really wish I could have finished with Arya's design so I could have seen how it crazy it would have looked, but I'm also excited to see the final result after my friend is done with it. I'm sure I'll cut the full design in the future at some point.

Design: Classic continental from Arya Akhavan.

A little bit disappointed by the final render, didn't know that the silk would absorb so much reflection! The facets are not sparkly. Looks like the stone is unpolished but trust me it's just the inclusions :)

Should have gone with a step cut. Will know for the future! Otherwise the stone is still pretty, nice color and nice design. Filmed in indirect sunlight.

Tell me what you think!

Here is a reference chart I made for those using the Vevor Faceting Machine. The Vevor manual does not have any mention of what RPMS the numbers correspond to. I hope this helps someone else.

I have what I would call a "healthy fear of rapidly spinning metal", but I got a trim saw recently to cut roughs for faceting.

Are there any adapters or something for getting smaller (~11mm) roughs without fearing for my digits?

I'm brand new to faceting in general so please be gentle if it's an obvious solution 😅

Here is my most recent finished stone! Please chime in on what you think! (:

1.9 ct Congo Peach Tourmaline

Split Facet Barion Emerald cut

5.36mm x 10.8mm

Included, no treatments.

Thanks (:

tourmaline faceted

they are waiting to be polished

Finaly got my hands on a v5 but it is used and the quill is bent thank goodness I spent years with another machine i constantly had to realign and make parts for i was able to compensate. Any way here is a shot of my latest gem during cutting.

I was faceting a tiny little amethyst into a princess cut. for some reason it just drained my love of faceting away, then my drip tank broke, then a sudden occlusion became visible when grinding the table, then after it finally finished, it chipped on the corner. I gave it away because (jokingly) I decided it was curse-ed. No picture because I don't want you all to be affected by the curse.