Stones I have cut

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Would you believe that the first time i tried to find the place i didnt see the sand heaps beside the road and drove for miles past it until i came across an old bloke giving molassas to nis cattle so i stopped and asked himmif he knew anything about it - it turned out that he was the bloke that first found the amethyst 40 odd years ago!

He was digging a hole to have a telephone pole put in and up came the crystals. It became a popular dig site overnight almost.
 
Latest project complete.

Rarely do I cut synthetics, I work almost exclusively with natural stones. But I just had to have a go at this design, written specifically for cubic zirconia. This is Akhavan's "Whirlpool" and it's basically a Portugese cut with the facets offset in a spiral. The pavilion while still on the dop looked like a turbine. While very difficult to capture in photos, the light actually does spiral as the gem is turned on it's axis, looking quite alot like real whirlpool. Due to the very low angles used to create the effect, there would not be many natural stones for which this design would work - diamond ans possibly natural zircon are about the only two that spring to mind. Plus, 225 facets are a lot to cut!

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Cheers mate. Yes, it did take a while and I'm not yet ready to try the ultimate in crazy facet number designs (that I've seen) by the same author - "The Arkenstone of Thrain" which has more than a thousand facets! :eek:

But I've never yet cut a traditional Portugese, which has less facets (though still quite a lot at about 150) and is similar looking but designed to work for a much broader range of gemstone types. I think that might be the next Lowmead amethyst :)
 
That's beautiful, obviously no problems with the polishing, I've heard CZ can sometimes 'reject' a polish and create problems, what's the finished weight and size? 225 facets... you'd need to keep track of where you're at! Think the Arkenstone might be one for a cold, wet week in winter!!

Have you tried Nano yet, just had a couple of pieces turn up from the Thai agents that I am looking forward to playing with, one is a translucent black which my daughter wants to see finished as she wants an everyday piece to wear. Black primary, shoulder diamonds or sapphires and white gold, in her words "I can dress it with anything dad", definitely a girl of impeccable taste!
 
Hey, I finally got back to this post. Thanks for that info Lefty and I scrolled all the pages that were linked in highlights. Nice little piece of Amethyst that you cut for your mate in Jeff's Lighthouse. I see you like cutting new diagrams.
Unfortunately I don't do the Bruce H'way anymore, I stay further inland when travelling up and down so I am going to miss out on Lowmead for awhile.
 
Dihusky said:
That's beautiful, obviously no problems with the polishing, I've heard CZ can sometimes 'reject' a polish and create problems, what's the finished weight and size? 225 facets... you'd need to keep track of where you're at! Think the Arkenstone might be one for a cold, wet week in winter!!

Have you tried Nano yet, just had a couple of pieces turn up from the Thai agents that I am looking forward to playing with, one is a translucent black which my daughter wants to see finished as she wants an everyday piece to wear. Black primary, shoulder diamonds or sapphires and white gold, in her words "I can dress it with anything dad", definitely a girl of impeccable taste!
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Actually, itdid play up a bit when it came to polishing. It seems to have a tendency to pit and orange peel similar to sapphire. Ive since read that it should be pre-polished with loose #8000 grit beforethe final polish in ordertk overcome this. I polished it with #100 000 diamond on ceramic and it really only biggest facets that gave anytrouble. There are so many facets on the 12mm wide gem that they are mostly really smalll and I think small facets tend to overcome this problem easier.

I havent tried nanositol, the only other man made I have cut is cristinite. Its a lot of fun to play with, especially the bi-coloured stuff.

Good to hear that somebody else likes black stones! A brilliantly polished black stone can ,ook stunning!
 
Just weighed her - a shadeunder 10 carats. The design has a very shallow crown and pavilion angles are very low as well, even a sapphire would probably window.
 
Pat Hogen said:
Hey, I finally got back to this post. Thanks for that info Lefty and I scrolled all the pages that were linked in highlights. Nice little piece of Amethyst that you cut for your mate in Jeff's Lighthouse. I see you like cutting new diagrams.
Unfortunately I don't do the Bruce H'way anymore, I stay further inland when travelling up and down so I am going to miss out on Lowmead for awhile.
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Cheers Pat.

I love the more artistic and unusual designs. I rarely do them with sapphire but amethyst is a good subject for trying new things.

Kurridala is another amethst spot in inland QLD.
 
Lefty said:
Actually, itdid play up a bit when it came to polishing. It seems to have a tendency to pit and orange peel similar to sapphire. Ive since read that it should be pre-polished with loose #8000 grit beforethe final polish in ordertk overcome this. I polished it with #100 000 diamond on ceramic and it really only biggest facets that gave anytrouble. There are so many facets on the 12mm wide gem that they are mostly really smalll and I think small facets tend to overcome this problem easier.

I havent tried nanositol, the only other man made I have cut is cristinite. Its a lot of fun to play with, especially the bi-coloured stuff.

Good to hear that somebody else likes black stones! A brilliantly polished black stone can ,ook stunning!
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Still experimenting with different lap material, have been working with a 3000 hard lap for fine cuts but find it too aggressive so going to get some 3k powder and try this with oil on a copper lap, already use copper for 8k pre-polish and find this works well, also working with 'typemetal' for 14k, being soft the grit embeds well and once fairly dry produces a great finish to take to 50k for the final, this I am currently using on a Nickle lap which works well and produces a beautiful final polish.

Currently working on a large piece of quart, 19mm across in a standard brilliant, finding I'm doing a heck of a lot of cheating to get the facets right in the pre and final polishes. Constant learning curve, but loving it.
 
Rough2cut's sintered #1200's produce an excellent finish to polish straight from. Like any sintered lap they cost (but can be expected to have a very long lifespan) but are worth it if you intend to do a great deal of cutting.

There seems to be as many different approaches as there are facetors, most of which work successfully. I have found the saying that "quartz cannot be polished with diamond" seems to be an old wives tale and have polished it very successfully with both #100 000 diamond on typemetal. I have also succeeeded polishing it with zirconium oxide. My favourite quartz polish however remains a thin slurry of cerium oxide - it seems to work so quickly and so well for quartz for me at least, that rarely do I polish it with anything else.

I keep a range of polishing laps on hand - typemetal, ceramic, tin alloy and even perspex along with a range of polishing agents: #60k and #100k diamond, cerium oxide, 0.3 micron alumina, zirconium oxide, chromium oxide, tin oxide - there should be some possible combination there to tackle nearly anything :) .
 
Dihusky said:
Interesting, mixing Cerium with oil? What lap material do you find works the best with the Cerium as I'd like to give this a try? I've only ever used it with Cabs.
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Oh no, I meant mix it with water - I don't think any of the oxides will function if mixed with oil :)

Believe it or not, the best polishing lap I've used for quartz is a disc of thick perspex that I bought from a gem show for about $5. It was hopeless until I scored it with a stanley knife, then it worked brilliantly.

You will hear all manner of things said, one of them being that perspex always rounds the facet edges badly - I'd invite anyone to take a close look at stones I've polished on this lap, it most certainly does not round the facets to any significant degree. Perhaps other kinds of plastic or perspex do but whatever this stuff is, it is extremely hard and tough and the surface does not yield in the slightest when pressed against.

I almost never experience agglommeration scratching when using this lap, something that used to plague me when using cerium on other laps such as typemetal. I use a thin slurry of cerium in water in a spray bottle and give a light squirt whenever the lap looks to be drying out.

Anyway, that's something I've found to work well for me - but there will be many different ways to skin a cat and everyone ends up finding a method that works well for them while other people prefer something else.
 
Cheers Wally, hope I can share some experiences that others will find useful :)
 
Very interesting, polished a few facets with the Cerium but I think my machine runs too fast, very squeeky and getting orange peel, have to keep lap wet. The Imahashi is fixed speed, fast or slow, don't exactly know what the speed is but estimate 3000 and 750rpm, was running at 750. Still learning the machine as it is totally different from the Gemmaster our instructor has or for that matter most other machines. It doesn't like magnetic laps but loves sintered that are true, the same with polishing laps.
 

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