⭐ Show Us Your Cut Stones - Before And After Photos

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I have it all from two lathes, a mill, cylindrical grinder, flat lapper, 600 ton capacity hydraulic press. I also have a small foundry operation for casting aluminium and plenty of other tools and equiptment. youll need most of this to make a good machine. But most of all youll need plenty of time and money.
 
I know it sounds harsh Gaelic ... But if I were you I'd recut it. Sure no one will notice much unless you point out some problems , but you are setting a standard for yourself . Depends if you are just cutting a few for fun or you want to get good at it. It's only going to be harder on smaller stones, so I believe it's best to try and do it right from the start , no matter how long it takes. Time will get shorter to do a good stone , this is how I've had my attitude for all things I do and seems to have worked so far .
I recut my first stone three or four times till I was happy :)
The thing is your polish and edges look sharp , just your meets are out .
So you know how to get a good Finnish , just jazz up the meets . If you are messing up your meets while polishing , then you have to look at what is happening with your prepolish .
But i only started in aprill , with a bike accident in between , so don't take too much notice from me :)
I just am very fickle at things I do , by day I'm an airbrush artist ( very fiddly) Or working with fibreglass .. So am very used to things going wrong and starting again .
Other artists love it when I critique thier work , because I'm honest , and occasionally insightfull. :)
With respect
Barney

It looks good and shiny .. But ask yourself .. iS IT ENOUGH ! Like an artwork you can over work it . It takes planning , patience and the horrible word " expieriance" to get good at anything . So just keep doing what your doing , I shove a lot of hours at this thing . To get my expieriance up... Boy is it neccassery :)
 
I was thinking about what I wrote :)
And realised I was talking to you like someone who knew me , my mistake :) you have done well, but what I was saying is that meet point and degree matters very much . For the sparkle .. Here is a gem that photoed funny , looks as if it has problems but no. It has many meet point on pavilion . To get an effect like this accuracy is the key . It comes...
1418054627_image.jpg
 
It looks good and shiny .. But ask yourself .. iS IT ENOUGH ! Like an artwork you can over work it .
Click to expand...

Yep. Cabbed a piece of a thunderegg last night. The shape of the dome looks pretty well bang on but I've slightly overcut down into the girdle a fraction. Wife thinks it looks great but I know there's a mistake - even though it could be hidden in a deep bezel setting - and I can't leave it like that, gonna have to re-do it.

And that's just a cab - far less complex than a faceted stone.

Nice stone there Barney, as always :) Love that effect.
 
No offense, I like criticism.
I know what you mean King, but no, I won't recut, it reminds me the mistakes I made, and the next stone will show a progression.

I know now how to have a good finish, and for the next stone I'll work at improving precision (on this side of the stone are all the mistakes: index error - the tiny facet between the two star, and overcut of some crown facets).
But I am still experimenting, since there is no one at home to tell me what is wrong or good.

Regarding the angles... I discovered when cutting the girdle that my faceting head is off of roughly 1 degree... and there is some play (very little) in the rotating shaft.
So I opened it completely and discovered the grease (fossilised) must be original (from the fifties), and the brass sleeve bearings have some damages. It needs a serious rebuild a should improve a little the angles.
Remember my faceting machine is an old Robild F1.
 
Glad your getting your machine sorted, but from what I hear almost all machines will be out by a degree . As long as you know you can work around it . I think all machines are much of a muchness .. Same principle . I like the way some old school facetors worked ... Alex Amess , an aussie that used to cut freehand . No hand piece , and could cut an SRB in twenty minutes. Also was doing concave facets twenty years before there was a machine specified for it . Much respect .
Sounds like you know what to do with your machine , I'll bet it will cut some nice stones once you've declogged it :) with the money you've saved you can purchase some fine laps , then you'll be really happy.
 
I know what you're talking about GallicProspector, I also kept my first stone - it was hand cut, no handpiece, with a small diamond lap on a Dremel tool... it's an emerald-cut green afghan tourmaline (might post a shot of it). Not done with the polish yet since it's the one that got me started on designing and building my own faceting machine (being a physics grad student and an engineer, I can handle that). Keeping track of your progress is a really good idea if you feel theneed for it. I would tend to do like Barney and don't call it the day until it's perfect, but that wouldn't give a clue as to how the journey began. It all depends on the stone's value of course, with quartz, even a very nice piece like your first one, no-brainer. If it had been something more expensive, well...
I read somewhere else about an old machine being rebuilt with new brass bearings (the weakness of all faceting machines that have sleeve bearings) and that worked great afterwards, sounds you've got a recipe for success with that oldtimey piece of equipment, these beasts were made to last for centuries with minimal servicing. My guess is that the dust from all the cutting eventually makes it into the grease and/or causes abrasion in the brass bearings. Would you show us a picture of that machine by the way? I love old hardware! :D
 
Its great your an engineer but design your machine from a place of more experience in faceting.I know a few home engineers who design faceting machines but build them on very limited faceting skills and miss some very fundamental aspects of a faceting machine. Feel free to pick my brains anytime. Don't over engineer it either. Rigidity in a machine isn't as important as a fexibilty. Power and speed is important too. most machines are very under powered and noisey. Just ask Barney about his new Ultratec.
 
And yes ... New machine too noisy , replacing new motor . Something you don't want to do on a new machine , something to think about:)
 
Kingsolomon said:
And yes ... New machine too noisy , replacing new motor . Something you don't want to do on a new machine , something to think about:)
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I had same problem with my Gemasta GF4 I bought new about 12 years ago. It was about three weeks old and developed a horrendous noise. Apparently it was something to do with the bonding to the magnets in the motor failing.
Shell lap supplies were aware of it and the motor was repaired - no problem since. I guess it can happen to the best of them.
 
I had a graves as my first machine and it was a lttle noisy but mostly underpowered.I then had a GF3 original with wernard sewing machine motor. A little noisey and gradually gets worse as the brushes wear. Same with the GFE3. I ended up buying GF2 with the big three speed push button motor. Had it for twenty years now. I recently
changed over to a 3 phase motor with a 240V inverter.This gives me infinite variable speed plenty of power and you can have external swithes for on?off and forward /Rev
and dial speed control. Its very quiet. I think that cutting by sound is very under utilized as I don't have a dial indercator or digital readout.
Barney bought an older Ultratec of me and Decided he wanted a brand new one. IT turned out to be noisier than the old one. I think its an inherent engineering flaw with this brand of machine. I couldn't cut full time on it would drive me crazy. Other than that Its a very accurate and easy to use machine. A student bought a new GF4 last year and It is very quiet powerful and very accurate as I tested it myself. Next im making my own brand of machine.Perhaps Ill collaborate with Sodabowski.
 
I approached UltraTec a few years ago about a project for a faceting device that didn't make it to the market, alas (too expensive to build). They believe in the cone drive system for the platter, I'm more prone to thinking "timing belt" myself on that matter, plus a real hardcore three-phase brushless motor (think high-power RC motors here). In the end my cost will be in the same range than the UltraTec V5 but I will have what theirs lack: USB :cool:

I can't seem to find back that first stone I cut I was talking about earlier, might be at the parents'... have a few opals from the Comet in Koroit in the cutting though.
 
So quick answer, I use ultralaps with a spray of water + light charge of cerium. Works perfectly on quartz.
My motor is a washing machine motor, no problem of power, it way oversized (and heaaavy).
I need a new belt as well as you can see.
The supporting of the motor is mostly done on the other side of the plate (the one you can't see), not with the two ridiculous metal pieces in front.

1418335422_img_1165.jpg

1418335465_img_1222.jpg
 
Sodabowski said:
I approached UltraTec a few years ago about a project for a faceting device that didn't make it to the market, alas (too expensive to build). They believe in the cone drive system for the platter, I'm more prone to thinking "timing belt" myself on that matter, plus a real hardcore three-phase brushless motor (think high-power RC motors here). In the end my cost will be in the same range than the UltraTec V5 but I will have what theirs lack: USB :cool:

I can't seem to find back that first stone I cut I was talking about earlier, might be at the parents'... have a few opals from the Comet in Koroit in the cutting though.
Click to expand...
USB? Geez ... Are you going to plug a computer into it? How will that help ? Computers everywhere!not being so computer savvy , don't really get it .. Angles / alignment readings ? Testing?
 
Keep it simple. The market is flooded with high tec machines that always are way out of your average factors financial reach. But make a over the top one for yourself.
My new design is a digital hybrid jamb peg with cam guide head. It means you cut stones to more conventional shapes for saleablitiy. Timing belt, a chain would be a bit noisy.
I polish at an average speed of 1400 RPM. I hate slow speeds for most cutting ops.
 
Kingsolomon said:
USB? Geez ... Are you going to plug a computer into it? How will that help ? Computers everywhere!not being so computer savvy , don't really get it .. Angles / alignment readings ? Testing?
Click to expand...

Think more "tiny stone cutting" without the "Bangkok", er, quality. Big rough deserves expert cutting, smaller ones (as in "melee") can do with automation IMO. Anything can be better than sending them to lesser standards cutters, I made that mistake with a lot of rather nice stones that came back to me mostly as windows. Never again! :mad:
 

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