36. Interview: Michelle Mai - Cutting and Designing Gemstones

Join Lucinda, Simon, and Michelle Mai as they explore the art and science of precision gem cutting. Discover techniques, tools, design principles, and the inspiring journey of a master gem cutter in this engaging episode.

Precision gem cutting techniques
Tools and machinery for faceting
Design principles for gemstones
Materials used in gem cutting
The journey of a gem cutter


Guest  name
Michelle Mai


Titles
Mastering Precision Gem Cutting: Techniques and Inspiration
The Art and Science of Gem Faceting with Michelle Mai


 sound bites
"Equipment is a huge barrier to entry"
"Polishing quartz is challenging for me"
"Start with cabochons to learn the basics"


Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Precision Gem Cutting
08:09 Michelle's Journey into Gem Cutting
10:53 Understanding Gem Cutting Machinery
13:09 The Learning Curve in Gem Cutting
15:57 Design Principles in Gem Cutting
18:57 Challenges with Different Gem Materials
21:36 Creating Unique Gem Designs
24:36 The Role of Light in Gem Performance
27:00 Inspiration Behind Michelle's Designs
29:59 Favorite Designs and Techniques
32:31 Conclusion and Future Aspirations
35:41 Exploring Favourite Materials in Gem Cutting
37:53 Natural vs. Synthetic Gemstones: A Balanced Perspective
39:48 Navigating Risk and Responsibility in Gem Cutting
44:08 Advice for Aspiring Gem Cutters
51:04 Encouragement for Beginners in Lapidary Arts

 resources
Amateur Gemstone Faceting Volume One by Tom Herbst - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07V4V7V4X
UK Facet Cutters Guild - https://www.ukfcg.org/
Gem Cut Studio - https://gemcutstudio.com/
Reddit r/shinypreciousgems - https://www.reddit.com/r/shinypreciousgems/


 guest links
Reddit - https://www.reddit.com/user/MichelleMai
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/michellemai/

gem cutting, gemmology, precision faceting, gemstone design, gem tools, gemstone materials, gem industry, gem education

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:15

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another thrilling episode of Fascination, a gemology podcast. As always, I am Lucinda.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

And I'm Simon. Hello.

SPEAKER_04 0:25

And we have a very exciting interview for you today. And it's actually well aligned with Simon's newfound passion. Simon, tell us a little bit about what you've been getting up to lately.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Yeah. So this interview we recorded quite a long time ago. And um at the time we just interviewed Aria and we'd also interviewed Justin. So it was kind of like we're doing a lot of gem cutting episodes, and we didn't want to inundate people with gem cutting things. But then I started gem cutting, and I'm more than fucking happy to inundate people with gem cutting things if it brings more gem cutting things to me. Because like you said, I'm now obsessed with cutting gem stuff. Thanks in small part to Michelle.

SPEAKER_04 1:14

Sorry, Jake just literally walked in with a he's in a towel. Okay, rewind.

SPEAKER_00 1:22

Um basically what if it's not a cat, it's a half-naked man. Like, you know, it's fine.

SPEAKER_04 1:29

One or the other in my house.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

I was basically saying that I'm obsessed with cutting gemstones now, and it's in no small part to our interviews with Justin Arya and indeed Michelle. Actually, Michelle was probably the one that got me most interested in it, which we talk about in this interview. So yeah, that was we've been sitting on this for a little while and we thought best to put it out there in a sort of backhanded way for Simon to get people on board to chat about gemstone cutting with him and faceting and things like that. Now, I'm not sitting here professing to be good at this yet. I've literally only got three stones. Um but I'm really enjoying it. If there's anybody out there that wants to get in touch with us, chat about gem gemstone cutting, faceting, then I'd be all for it.

SPEAKER_04 2:27

From my perspective, I first discovered Michelle stalking her on Reddit, um, on the Shiny Precious Gemstone subreddit. Her work is incredible. She is such a wonderful person. We had such a great chat, so I think you guys are really gonna love it.

SPEAKER_00 2:41

Yeah, and having said and having sort of made an appeal to reach out to people that are interested in cutting gemstones too and can help me, there are actually lots of really cool and helpful people out there. So I basically started by doing a simple lesson which taught me how to use the machine. Now I've got a handpiece faceting machine. Michelle will tell you about the other type of machine, which is like a masked faceting machine. I bought this because it was cheaper. Uh it was basically half the price of the masked one. So the masked one's made by Ultra Tech. It's called a V5, I think is the one that most people use. It's very precise. It has like a digital gauge on it. Um, mine is very not precise. And sort of, you know, you pick up the handpiece and you sort of like, I don't know, you have constantly just.

SPEAKER_04 4:15

So far for now, you'll you'll get there for now.

SPEAKER_00 4:21

I would recommend that though. So if you're interested in getting into faceting, then go to the UK Facet Gatters Guild and you can join, become a member for like a tenor, and that gets you access to the WhatsApp group. Everyone's super helpful. There's only about 75 members. Um that's something that you can do. There's also a really good book which Michelle talks about. I would endorse that. It's a book by Tom Herbst. It's called Amateur Gemstone Faceting Volume 1, The Essentials. Justin has a book which he's currently uh reprinting in both French and English, I'm led to believe. Uh it's sold out everywhere at the minute. That's called The Secret Teachings of Gem Cutting, something like that. I've cut three stones. I'm really enjoying it, and uh you should do it too.

SPEAKER_04 5:10

Wonderful. Guys, we hope that you enjoy our chat with Michelle as much as we did. It was a really, really fun one, and as Simon says, really useful if you're interested in gemstones but uh or gem cutting, but even if you're not, such an interesting, fun chat. So enjoy it, guys.

SPEAKER_00 5:26

And interested in designing your own gemstones, which we just spoke about. Michelle does a lot of that. This interview is really good. It's inspiring. Please enjoy.

SPEAKER_04 5:35

Hello, everybody, and welcome to a very exciting episode of Fascination, a gemology podcast. As always, I'm Lucinda.

SPEAKER_00 5:42

And I am Simon.

SPEAKER_04 5:44

And today we are joined by a very exciting guest, Michelle Mai. She is a legend of the precision gem cutting community. And today we are going to talk all about precision gem cutting.

SPEAKER_01 5:54

I Although I do have to make a note, I don't call myself a precision gem cutter because within the field of custom gem cutting or precision gem cutting, there is a subgroup that I would consider to be precision gem cutters, the ones who submit the competitions who really look at their polish in their meats under 10x magnification and are really like they are true meat point fastetors. They really want to meet the definition of precision. And to be precise, my style of cutting isn't quite precision. I do cut for a living, so I can't spend as much time to get a perfect meat point, perfect polish. But I would say definitely a step above what we call commercial gem cutting. But I I personally do not use the word precision gem cutting to describe what I do.

SPEAKER_04 6:41

Well, that's actually a great intro into our next question, Michelle, which is please introduce yourself and where you see yourself in the world of gemstones.

SPEAKER_01 6:50

Perfect. Um, I would call myself a custom gem cutter. Like I cut all the stones that I offer personally. I mostly cut in my own designs or designs from other independent individual gem cutters that I know. And I do a lot of custom commissions as well as cut for my own enjoyment and for my own collection. And it is a very, very small niche, I'd say. Like there's a lot of space in this field. Um, you know, I think the kind of work that I do is like a fraction of the percent of the gem industry. Um, so there's a lot of space for that. And as I said, like I could call it underneath the general umbrella of precision cutting or meat point cutting, although I also don't cut all designs that are truly neat point. For example, like a step cut is not neat point. I do a lot of uh improvised designs on the fly and that don't necessarily involve everything meeting perfectly. And I guess to zoom a little bit further out, what is jump cutting? Within the large umbrella of lapidary, the craft and art of shaping stones are typically not like your stone countertops, but like stones for jewelry or for kind of smaller scale purposes. I'm the type of jump cutting I do is faceting. So that involves putting flat polished facets on generally transparent or translucent stones. Um I like to really optimize around light performance. So I typically work with fully faceted stones. Sometimes I'll do rose cuts where they're flat on the bottom and faceted on the top. Um, but I generally uh care more about uh light return and light performance. That being said, um I'm sure this will come out soon, but how did it get started? I actually did start with tabishons. So I have always been into collecting rocks since I was a little girl. I think one of the my favorite memories, the ones that my parents like to talk about me, is when I was in middle school around, sorry, elementary school, around seven or eight years old, I would spend our recess breaks out in the field where we had a crushed granite track that we would run laps around. And in the crushed granite were teeny tiny little garnets. So I'd be there. Nose to the ground, teasers, plucking out garnets from the sand. So you invention stones early. Yes, yes. And then sometime after college, I was, you know, I was, you know, essentially a minute adult trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my free time. And I had uh I was in a group of friends that were very handy. They did a lot of like burning man style crafts, you've got welders, you've got woodworkers, and they were like, hey, Michelle, you should like figure out what you want to do with your hands. And I would I was also into beta jewelry. So I was like, well, I like jewelry and I like rocks. I could I get I also did want to learn how to like Silversmith, but I was like, oh, fire is scary, metal is expensive, but how do we make rocks into jewelry? So I found a one on Google, like how to make rock into jewelry. I don't know, I don't know, but I looked up. Um but I managed to find a local laffidary club, uh, showed up um at their like intro session and they they did teach cabochon making classes. And I was like, oh, this is this is really, really fun. I was probably the youngest person there by like three decades. And they were like, ooh, fresh blood. We need more of you. Um, and I I really dove into the deep end for uh cabochon making for about I'd say almost a year.

SPEAKER_02 10:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 10:24

So they were like, hey Michelle, you're young, you've got good eyes. It's like not really. Very good at math. You like science? It's like not really. I like I can do algebra-ish. Um, but they're like, oh, you should try faceting. And I was like, oh no, that's too scary. I could never. So that put the little seed of an idea in my mind. And uh I think the next year I went to a uh rock and gem show um at a town like about an hour away. There was a guy there who had a faceting machine. He was doing demonstrations. And it was a slow day. Uh I think it was like a Friday afternoon. Um so I you know, after I did my laps around the show, I hung out at his booth and I was like, show me more. Um and he really got me started. He was kind enough to loan me my first machine uh until I was able to find a used machine on Craigslist. Um I did end up getting a different uh used uh V2 analog, I think from the 70s. And that was my workhorse and what I what I learned.

SPEAKER_04 11:24

That's so cool. And was it an art that you kind of trusted yourself with right away enough that you were open to investing in it, or did it feel like you had a really steep learning curve through all of this?

SPEAKER_01 11:35

I'm not sure. Everybody has their own journey and the things that they're good at and things that they're not. Um I was I'm definitely not a confident person, but I was very obsessed with it. So I stuck with it. You followed that that curiosity through it. Yep. Like every step, I think every step of my advancement has been, oh, I don't know if they can do this, and then trying it, I was like, okay, I guess that wasn't so bad.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

Something something I'm really interested in is the like the machinery that you need. So you mentioned a V2 there and sort of how getting to grips with using that. Can you tell us about what tell us what a V2 is and what it does and like how you how you go about using it?

SPEAKER_01 12:16

Yeah, so take a step back. Um the type of mask faceting I do is on what's called a masked style machine. So it has like a kind of a cylinder with a screw on it, and that allows you to adjust the height. And there's basically an armature that allows you to control uh what's called the index. So where you are on like the wheel, as well as the angle in relation to the spinning lap where you actually, the abrasive action actually occurs. The more common type in commercial cutting is what's called the hand piece type of machine, where there's also ways of setting the angle. You can do all the same things as you do with the mast, but it's like it is a piece that you can completely take off the machine. You're not stuck to this vertical element that controls your Z-axis, basically. Of those mast type machines, one of the more prominent American manufacturers is called Ultratech. And they have two, well, they now have three major lines. The V2 is kind of the original line that was available to hobbyist faceters, and relatively more recently, they've come out with the V5s. I believe they've also now have the VL line that is a stripped-down V5 that's a little bit a lower uh price point. Um, and I think they also have, they might actually have a fourth called a glass type that's meant for like really big, beefy stones. So I started in the V2, so an old style. It was all analog. There was no like digital angle dial that would give you real-time feedback on the dial. Um, the dial indicator only worked in, I think, quarter angle increments. Instead of now we have the dig with a digital angle dial, it goes to hundredth. So you couldn't be super precision.

SPEAKER_00 13:56

There's a big difference on that.

SPEAKER_01 13:58

Um there's there's definitely old school machining ways of how the the chuck was constructed that used like a tapered V, and probably getting too much into the weeds.

SPEAKER_04 14:09

But there is no such thing as too far into the weeds for us, Michelle.

SPEAKER_00 14:12

Yeah, then nothing is too far into the weeds.

SPEAKER_01 14:16

I cut on that machine for about four or five years and probably cut several hundred stones on it, but it did start wearing down over time. I think there were three little screws that hold the armature parallel to the spinning abrasive labradary disc. Those had worn out and had actually stripped, and there wasn't enough metal around it to retap and hold it securely. So it would slowly drift further and further away from holding a true angle. I think by the time I retired that machine, when I wanted to cut my table at zero degrees, it was actually at two degrees. So for a while, I was like, oh, all of my stones are windowing. Why is this happening? And then I realized yeah, it was really, it was not giving me an accurate angle. Um, and it was only going to get worse with time. Um so, and then also the bearings on the motor were starting to go. Again, this machine was over seven, 50 years old. So at that point, you know, I'd been doing it for enough time that I was like, okay, like I am invested, uh, I will buy a new machine. So I upgraded to the digital V5. And at that time, this is probably I think it was 2022. Um, it was almost uh probably around $6,000, so a substantial investment. I think my V my V2 was probably around $1,500 back in like 2019 or so when I bought it. Um, so that is, I would say, a huge barrier to entry for anybody who's looking into going into precision um precision gem cutting. Uh, I know there's a lot of new um there's a lot of newer machines on the market. There's a bunch of uh ones coming out of Asia. I think there's a Vietnamese manufacturer, Bangkok manufacturer. There's a few people who have purchased, I think, the intellectual property of defunct manufacturers like Graves and Gemmaster, I believe. I don't know. I'm happy with my machines, so I haven't really been looking for them. But I do think that there's a lot more options in the market nowadays. I also think that there's a Vivor, a very cheap, like less than $1,000 machine in the market, but I've heard a lot of pretty mixed reviews about the reproducibility that you can get from those machines. So for anybody who's thinking about getting started, like equipment is a huge um, I think, barrier to entry and limitation. But because to achieve a good polish, you really do need reproducible um angles to get the plane right. Um you can easily chase hours on a single facet if you're off skew and it's just a recipe for a tremendous amount of frustration. And I think the learnings that you get from that don't necessarily apply once you get a newer machine. So I would recommend if you can take classes, um, especially if there's a local lapidary club or if you're willing to like travel for a workshop, just to see if you like it before you spend thousands and thousands of dollars on equipment.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

And then in terms of like dipping your toe in, like how far do you have to dip it in before you can like think, oh, I might actually be able to fashion something that kind of looks like a faceted gemstone.

SPEAKER_01 17:27

Again, I I do think this is very much personal driven. I was hooked in the first stone. I was hooked halfway through the first stone. I knew this was something that I really wanted to do. But I would think, I would say like after your second or third stone, you would know by then if this is really something that you like. I think my second stone took me 20 hours. You know, my first turn took me like four. So it's it's a lot of time. Nowadays, you know, I spend usually an average of two to four hours per stone. If I'm not doing a a standard design, nothing super complicated. But you know, there are still times where I spend, you know, 10 hours on a particularly tricky stone, or if it comes off the dot and I have to like redo things.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

And that's because if you're not the kind of person, it's because you've gotten quicker at the process rather than over time. Okay, fine. Right, okay.

SPEAKER_04 18:14

Do you remember of the first material that you cut, Michelle?

SPEAKER_01 18:16

What was it? It was a Morganite. Really? What an interesting choice. Tell me more. It it was the stone that the demonstration was on. Um it was very pale Morganite, and who's like I think beryl is a fantastic beginner stone. Um, so it wasn't super expensive. It was, you know, barely pink. Um, but you know, I still think beryl is one of my favorite materials to work with because it's easy to cut, it's you know, not particularly chippy, easy to polish, you know, it doesn't have a super high refractive index, but it's not, you know, it's not as low as quartz. And I have kept a spreadsheet of every single stone I that I've cut since the beginning.

SPEAKER_04 18:56

So I can pull it all up. Do you have specific stones where you're like, oh, I really hated that one, or like that feel really triumphant to you?

SPEAKER_01 19:06

Um, I have tried cutting some super cleavage-y stones like kunzite and uh silomanite, completely unsuccessful. Oh well, I I didn't even succeed. Like it would just shred itself, and I was like, I guess that's not happening. Uh, I actually have a really hard time with quartz. I'm typically a diamond polisher. So for the people who aren't familiar with lapidary arts, there's two major types of polishing compound on hard stones. One is diamond that works with most stones, and then oxides are another category that also work with a lot of stones. Quartz really shines to use the punishment. No pun intended. With oxide polishes, and I just haven't been able to figure out the technique. It takes me forever to get a good polish in quartz, um, and it's still not like a great polish to begin with. So um when you talk about it. I would say Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 20:03

When you talk about the diamond polishing and the oxides, that's what you're sort of doping the disc with. That is that's right. Yes. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 20:12

So um that's the abrasive. Yeah. If you've done any woodworking or any sort of grinding operation, it's very similar. You start with a coarse grit and you work your way up to progressively finer and finer grits until you end up with, at least for stones, a final polishing compound that's usually on the sub-micron scale. Diamond is a very common one for commercial cutting, it usually stops around 3,000 to 4,000 grit. For precision, umbrella, precision cutting, usually somewhere in the 5,000 to 20 50,000 to 200,000 grit range. I use 60,000 myself. And uh oxides, my understanding, although I haven't really delved as deeply into the science, my understanding is that for quartz, the oxide polishing has both a mechanical component as well as a chemical component. Because quartz as a silicate has like there's like a hydrated layer, and the oxides can somehow interact with the silicic acid. I don't that's about as far as I know.

SPEAKER_03 21:19

Fair enough.

SPEAKER_01 21:20

Whereas diamond is purely a mechanical polish, as far as I can tell.

SPEAKER_04 21:24

Yeah. It's so interesting. And I find this with certain stones as well. Like there's some stones that I have to know every single thing about it and everything about its existence. And then there's others when I'm like, I don't care about her. Yeah. She can go live her life over there in the corner. Like, I'm done. Amazing. And so very broadly, and for total newbies, let's talk about how to design a gem. So, kind of what are the key principles for you when you're looking at making a new design or you've taken a commission from someone?

SPEAKER_01 21:54

Yeah. I first start as uh I've actually gotten a couple of commission inquiries for design. In the very recently, which is not super common. I only usually get a couple, one or two a year. I first start out with like, what do they want? Right. Are they looking for a particular outline shape, which is really important when it comes to how I design? Like a regular polygon, around hexagon, octagon tends to be much easier to design around than an elongated shape. Are they looking for something that is purely like give me all the sparkles or give me a specific geometric effect? Or I want a particular shape like in the stone. Like I've done a couple of initial designs, right? Where there the performance is secondary to getting a flat, faceted, not carved initials. So that's usually what I start with. And uh from there, uh I need to know what materials are working with so I know what refractive index uh we're doing. Again, as since most of the time I'm looking for optical performance, I pay attention to the critical angles to make sure that all of my angles are above that. Sometimes I I do get commissions that want an intentional window, but there's still like to get an attractive stone, there's usually still facets that are above the critical angle and then intentionally windowed facets to achieve whatever effect they want. Uh from there, there's I usually lay down the pavilion first to get a and like usually have like a fake table, like everything on top at like 45 degrees and a big old table just to kind of get a sense of what the overall performance will be like. Lay out the pavilion in a way that sends the light back in their attractive manner. Um and I'm I'm not I'm not a perfectionist when it comes to my designs or my cutting. Like I cut under 4x magnification, you know, good enough by eye, good enough when I'm up here is gonna be good enough when it's like at a at a distance, right? Same thing with my gems. I don't like obsess over optimizing for the perfect, you know, looking at the numbers, making the numbers go up. Like I don't I don't pay attention to that as much as looking at the render and going, okay, is do I see any obvious windowing? Do I see any obvious like big blocks of head shadow or fisheye, any major defects? Um, and then start tweaking my facets. I use Jump Cut Studio now, um, start tweaking my facets, either the angles, the offsets, until I'm like generally pleased with how the pavilion looks. Then I'll start laying in the crown facets. And I typically name my designs around what the crown facets are doing. So if it's a floral design, it's usually the crown facets that have a more petal-like or flower-like arrangement. If it's a geometric design, it's usually reflected in the crown. And then from there, you know, the pavilion, I would say is the engine of most of the performance. The crown is there, I think, to look pretty, especially in suboptimal lighting. If you've got really dark stones or if you're in a dark room, you're never you're, you know, you're rarely in the perfect environment for the gem to be glamorous. So I feel like an interesting crown will provide beauty in non-optimal conditions.

SPEAKER_00 25:07

So you're sort of approaching the crown as it's like a like a pretty pattern, and then the pavilions doing all the work of returning the light.

SPEAKER_01 25:15

Heavy lifting. Exactly. Yep. And it also means that if I want to make a rose cut out of it, I'm, you know, I'm generally gonna have a nice pattern on the ground. It's not just your basic triangular rose cut shape.

SPEAKER_00 25:28

It's uh one question I have is um you were talking about elongated stones and how you kind of avoid them. Something I think listeners might be interested in is like the bowtie effect in an oval car. And uh, why why does that happen? And how do you prevent that from happening?

SPEAKER_01 25:45

So um I think Arya's probably done more looking into the bowtie effect. I normally notice it when I have offsets that are very close to zero. So if you're on a 96 index, like the 96 and 48 facets, if you have directly opposing facets, they seem to catch the head shadow and reflect off of each other, and that gives that black um right in the middle. Um, if you have offsets that are like only one or two off from zero, uh, they sometimes will have they tend to have that same effect. Most of my elongated designs are baryon style, which is adapting a conical pavilion to an elongated shape. The downside to that is the longer you get, kind of the steeper the baryon facets are, and the more unwieldy the stone is to set. So I find that long at ovals longer than like a 1.5 ratio, baryons really are tricky unless you're also having a custom design. They don't tend to be great for rings either. So I will go for keels for very long ovals. And you know, to some extent, I think it's um, especially if you're looking for a meetpoint fastening where you want to make a center point at the beginning. If you have like optimal angles right at the center, to get the angles to meet at the um at that keylet, the tips have to be more shallow. So that also tends to lead to windowing and long, elongated stones, where the uh the facets near the center are maybe at optimal angles, but the ones at the edges are going to be too shallow. Conversely, if the ones that are um at the you know long ends are at the optimal angles, then the ones near the center will be too steep and you're going to get a lot of tilt windowing or light leak. Um so I think there's just there's some performance constraints that are inherent in very long shapes with the refractive indexes that we typically see in colored stones. Like once you get into like super high above two RI for like rutile, CZ, moissanite, diamond, some of those rules go out the window. I don't tend I don't typically cut in higher than like YAG, so like higher than 1.83. So I, you know, I hadn't done a lot of optimization for truly high RI material. There are some counterintuitive, the few times I have cut, um, I think that there are some counterintuitive rules when you get that high, like fisheye around the table, where you I think it's like so much internal light bouncing that you get this dark ring around the table is something we don't normally see in these intermediate to lower RI materials, but you can see in very high RI.

SPEAKER_04 28:31

And Michelle, so along with doing kind of commissioned work, you also make your own work and have an amazing portfolio. I would encourage everybody to go once again to Shiny Precious Gems. When Michelle says she's not a perfectionist, like your gems are incredible. They're so, so beautiful and just creative, and you have such an amazing, I think you choose really beautiful stones as well. I was looking at a synthetic sapphire that you did, just doing a little pre-interview stocking that was like lilac to burgundy, like this beautiful stone. Tell me about your own design. So I know they're often biology-based. Why is that or chemistry as well?

SPEAKER_01 29:07

Uh my training um is in biology. So I'm a I'm a biochemist. I have a degree in biochemistry. I worked as a protein uh biochemist in process development for almost 10 years. Um so that's a natural source of design inspiration. I also love flowers half since I was a kid as well. Um, so that's a that's been a large natural inspiration. Um and honestly, part of it is what do you call it? Like chicken and egg. Back when I was first making designs, I didn't want to call it like rounds 16A, you know, rounds and B, you know, I wanted to give names to my things. Um so I started leaning on like flowers based on the symmetry. So like if it was a uh sixfold design, I would like, okay, well, I want to use a flower that has sixfold symmetry. And that kind of started a lot of this, like, you know, some of my more complicated like Portuguese variations, right? Like that looks like a marigold or it looks like a dahlia. So I that is a common source of inspiration for a design once I've made the design. And sometimes, like, oh, I really like that flower. I'd like to make a design that looks like that flower. So that the chicken and egg. Uh, same thing with chemistry. I think it started with hexagons. Like hexagons are common motif in organic chemistry and biochemistry. So early on, when I was playing around with like a bunch of hexagon variations, I would name them after um benzene derivatives. Benzene is a six-membered carbon ring. And then that started, you know, once people saw that, I was like, oh, I think my first commission was, can you make an MDMA design? I was like, oh, that's going to be interesting. Well, MDMA has like a hexagon fused to a pentagon motif. I wonder if I could put that motif within the crown of a design. And then I realized there's a lot of different common chemicals like caffeine that have the same motif. And so as I would iterate on that design, like play around with different pavilions or like slightly different crown proportions, I would name them off of derivatives that had that heterocyclic ring. That's so cool.

SPEAKER_04 31:14

What are some of the designs that you would love to point people towards? What are some of the designs you're proudest of?

SPEAKER_01 31:21

Oh, that's so hard. I do have a giant design spreadsheet that I spent dozens of hours doing. If you click on my commissions form, um, which is linked in my in my profiles, like I have a design gallery there. Eventually, I'm I'm not good with technology. I'm not good with computers. Eventually, I do want to make a website where you can scroll and see them instead of having to like be on a Google Sheet and click a bunch of individual imager links. Uh, but there I do call out like my favorite designs for each shape. Um, I think uh recently the one I've liked the most is um a square cushion called, which I called it tuberes, bari and bow, because the crown is is adapted from a John Bailey design called Bari and Bow. And I believe the tuberus came from it, it was a Portuguese style pavilion. Um went through a number of variations into oh gosh, I for I've I've I've never forgotten. I should have I should write these down, but like it's like three variations deep from something that used to be a different flower, and I had to keep coming up with like different flower names. So that's how I ended up with it. Sounds absolutely sick.

SPEAKER_00 32:33

Can you just um you mentioned a Portuguese pavilion? Could you just explain what you mean by that as well, please?

SPEAKER_01 32:41

So a Portuguese round is one of the I would call a classic round signs. So while a round brilliant has two tiers on the pavilion, one tier that basically meets the girdle in 16fold symmetry, and then another tier that gives eight little spikes. A Portuguese is as if you took that principle and like Fibonacci style just layered tier upon tier upon tier upon tier. So it has this really beautiful, like regular, kind of geometric but also floral type design. Um, and a there's not really a standard Portuguese, but the general conception of a Portuguese cut is that same principle of layered tiers offset by an equal dist uh by number of indexed teeth alternating, and on both crown and pavilion. And the number can vary like in very small stones. Sometimes you only have two tiers on uh three tiers on the on the bottom, maybe three tiers on top. Sometimes they're mixed with like a pavilion, uh Portuguese pavilion, really a crown, and larger stones it can have five, six, seven tiers deep. So it's a very kind of flexible design. Um that can that style of pavilion can also be adapted to different outline shapes. So in this case, I put it onto like a square cushion shape and then played around the crown for a different type of facet arrangement.

SPEAKER_04 34:02

I'm gonna go look that up. I bet that's actually gonna be my favorite cut of all time because I love I love a Portuguese and I love a square cushion.

SPEAKER_01 34:10

Okay. Another one of my favorite designs, we'll ever talk about, I do love rounds. My other favorite design is speaking of chemistry and spark designs, is my caffeine round. So it is a five-fold design requires an 80 index. Um, and it does have that little like the squint, it's kind of squished, but there's like a hexagon and a pentagon right next to each other, and it's just it's just really sparkly. So I think it's just like sparkly, but like kind of different. So and when you're cutting for yourself, a lot of fitting.

SPEAKER_04 34:40

Well, I mean when you're cutting for yourself, is there uh a quality of the finished stone that really excites you the most? Like, do you want something that's super sparkly? Do you want something that's got great color saturation? Like, is there something that you're always aiming for or striving for in your finished stones?

SPEAKER_01 34:57

I do tend to design for scintillation. So both reflections off of the crown facet. So I tend to have small facets in the crown, generally fairly small table. And then I do like performance. So I don't I'm less so like a big broad flashes of color. Um, I don't cut a lot of step cuts. I rarely do like radiant styles, although I've been doing more of them lately. And for my personal collection, I'm like a Pokemon collector. I want one of everything. Yeah. All the colors of all the stones when it comes to my designs or synthetics, like I want one of all my designs, which I haven't been very good about doing, but eventually I'll get there. So I do have a fairly extensive personal collection.

SPEAKER_04 35:40

So jealous. So tell us about your favorites. What's your favorite material to work with? What do you think performs best with how you naturally like to design stones?

SPEAKER_01 35:49

So for natural materials, I would say garnets on my first love going from again when I was a wee little kid. Yeah. Collecting garnets. I just love the range of colors that you get from them. And they tend to yeah, they tend to occur in like generally good shapes, especially alluvial garnets. Like they they're usually kind of chonky, round and oval. They have a decent refracted index, so you can work a lot within like the 6.8 to 1.75 range. Most designs will look good in them. Any design written for sapphire will usually look pretty good in garnet. And they're like generally easy to cut and polish. Like then there's some that gives like chipping issues. So they've got, I think some of the ones that are blast mine will do will tend to shred and leave shards in your polishing lab. But by and large, they tend to be generally unproblematic, especially again, alluvial garnets. And then for synthetics, I like um synthetic spinel and YAG for very similar reasons. They have uh good refractive index, they're relatively hard, they're easy to polish, they're great for testing designs. I do cut a lot of sapphire, uh, especially for like engagement. But yeah, sapphire takes longer, it's harder on the shoulder, you do have the tail with more attention and basseting.

SPEAKER_04 37:02

Do you have a strong stance on the natural versus synthetic debate? I think, especially as jewelers, I think people in our industry tend to or they want to kind of take a stand. But I can still imagine if your passion is cutting material, like synthetics actually offer incredible colors. They're you're not gonna cry if you really fuck it up. Like I can so see all the benefits. They change colors.

SPEAKER_01 37:28

I love both. Um, I would say my cutting's probably relatively equally split between natural and synthetics. Most of my commissions are in for synthetics because I again like they are such a great canvas for showcasing design, right? If they if I have design and I want to cut it as written, uh, I will almost always go for a synthetic. And again, like as you say, like if I want to target a specific dimension, uh, it's just so much easier to order a big old trunk from synthetic and saw it up and not have to care about like a really maximizing yield. Then again, you know, I started from a love of minerals and rocks and gems. So I also love natural stones. I love the challenge of like troubleshooting within the constraints of this is the rock that you have. A lot of my designs come from having to improvise or experiment around what I've, you know, oh shoot, like there's an inclusion, and now, you know, what I thought was going to be a long, uh short oval is now a long oval. Uh gotta finish the rock. And so, like, how do I make the best of the situation? And then sometimes it's good enough to be like, okay, I'll save that as a new design. Sometimes you just save it as like, oh, improvise. Yeah. It is what it is. I love that.

SPEAKER_04 38:37

So I mean, I think you've got a question.

SPEAKER_00 38:39

Well, yeah, and then I suppose when when you've got like things like Yags and Luegs and things like that, like they don't really you can't you can't imitate that. There's no there's no natural alternative to that. They don't look the same. So I suppose if you're like that they're really cool when you put a good when you put a good interesting cut on things like that, then like it's it's nothing like them, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:01

Yeah, absolutely. Or like the the vivid cobalt blue spinels. I mean, I suppose they do exist in nature, but they're extraordinarily millions of dollars.

SPEAKER_00 39:10

You need you need some serious money to be buying them, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:13

Speaking of which, my very first commission with a client rough was for a vivid cobalt blue look in Vietnamese cobalt spanel. And I had no idea how valuable it was at that time.

SPEAKER_00 39:28

It's probably for the best.

SPEAKER_01 39:29

Yeah. It was like a, you know, being big for that, yeah, big for that three and a half millimeters round. Like I'd cut a round billion out of it. And then later on, I realized like I'm kind of glad I didn't know because I would have been so much more nervous.

SPEAKER_04 39:45

Like I probably would have made a lot more mistakes. Well, I was gonna say, do you ever get stage fright? Like, especially if you're approaching something that you know is gonna be technically challenging, or if you're using somebody else's rough, or are you just so experienced now that it's like whatever happens, you feel confident that you can just get over, like make something out of it.

SPEAKER_01 40:04

I definitely get stage fright, and I do turn down gems that I I would say I don't have a risk tolerance for. So like for business background, like I am uh I I don't carry insurance, right? So I need to make sure that if if anything does happen, whether it's a fuck up on my end or something happens in shipping, that I am able to cover any losses. So I do turn down commissions for you know, someone also burden of responsibility. Yeah. Like I had I had a commission for like a natural emerald that I was like, hmm, no, thank you. Can't do that.

SPEAKER_03 40:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:36

I can I can refer you to a few thoughts that do have a higher risk tolerance.

SPEAKER_04 40:39

Um like we know people who won't even set natural emeralds on the exact.

SPEAKER_01 40:44

So so that that gives me like a ceiling of of risk. Most of most client rough that I cut nowadays are things like Montana sapphire gravel, and I've cut hundreds, maybe yeah, hundreds of Montana sapphires. So by now I'm like quite familiar with them. I have cut, I think my most heartbreaking moment was again early on in my fasting career, where I was cutting a lagoon, like light blue and decolite for a client. And you know, I had cut a c a number of turmines before, but I hadn't cut any of this color. Um, and I'm primarily a wax stopper. Um, and as soon as I put flame to it, it sattered, like crazed into bits. Uh, that was like a two gram rough, too. So uh I called him, I called the client up at like 11:30 p.m. Because this is after work, right? Still still had a day job that I called him absolutely sobbing. And you know, I was like 25, 26, so it's like okay, I just couldn't help it. And he was thankfully extremely gracious about it, but I felt so bad. Um, and luckily I've never had anything like that happen again.

SPEAKER_00 41:58

Yeah, we're all touching.

SPEAKER_01 42:00

But now, yep, yeah. But now whenever I have, especially if it's not a material I'm super familiar with, I research the hell out of it to know what to expect. I will usually glue dot just in case it it does happen to be heat sensitive. And I I let the client know, like on my intake form, you know, things happen and I will do my best um to mitigate risk. I do keep a network of other facetors that I will refer out to. Maybe there's somebody else who is willing um or is able to deliver on um on what I can't. Like I got a uh uh inquiry recently for an amateurine, and I'm like, I'm not your girl for courts. I honestly I'll refer you to this guy who is gonna be better and way cheaper, and honestly, just like he's gonna do a better job than I can. So I I like I know my limits. Um, there's so many people who do good work that I have no issue referring out if I think you know, maybe I can't do this particular job justice.

SPEAKER_00 42:54

That's something I have found. It's not necessarily limits, it's more like you're you know where your speciality lies at the end of the year.

SPEAKER_04 43:01

Yeah, and the and the stuff you really care about is.

SPEAKER_00 43:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 43:04

You know. I think that's honorable. And I bet I would also say, like, it makes if I were a client, which someday hopefully, it would make me trust you more, right? Like I know that if you've said yes, but you have to be saying no because important. And you love the stone and you've got and I've a vision for it. And I think that's amazing and such a lovely way to work. Anyway. Um, I'm an American, so I get quite a few so if you'll have to forgive me. Simon is very English, so that's why he's asking all the technical questions.

SPEAKER_00 43:36

Unfortunately, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:38

My my partner's mother is also British, so I I get a old English mother in law, something like it.

SPEAKER_00 43:45

Yeah, fun.

SPEAKER_04 43:49

I think Simon and I have both been really impressed speaking to people in this community, and I think we found it in gemology more broadly about how wonderful and welcoming and warm and inclusive it. Everybody is, but it's still like there's a a learning curve, right? And there it's almost hard to know where to go for information. So what would your suggestions be, your top tips for somebody interested in gem cutting?

SPEAKER_01 44:15

I like reading. So I'm old school. I would recommend a particular book. Uh Tom Earpst, Fascinating for Amateurs, something like that. Uh he's got two volumes. I think really the first volume is um the more foundational one. I I found it on Amazon for like $35. And I think it's the single best investment for your money. A, it lays everything out in a very linear fashion. Um before I found the book, um, I had I had read through probably like the last 10 years on Jemalgy Online Forums, which is like the place at that time uh online for um any information about lapidary. And it, you know, it was very useful, but you did, it was very disjointed. You got a lot of contradicting information. I think shortly after that was when um the fascinating finds on Facebook and a couple of other Facebook groups um that you where you could get kind of a broader perspective, but it was still also like you got your wax doppers fighting with your glue doppers and it was hard, you know, it was hard to understand what you know truth and reality were. So I think having a single source to at least get your foundations down. Again, you might find information that or experience that disagrees with what you what the book says, but as a broad overview of what fasting is like and like the major um troubleshooting areas you're you're likely to find yourself in. I think it's a fantastic overview. It's got a fan I love the old dad humor. May not be to everyone's taste, but I personally found it delightful. And um this, you know, I I started before there were a lot of YouTube channels, and it is my understanding that there is now quite a proliferation of good uh YouTube content that actually show you the process because that is the drawback of a book. Like it will give you the principles, but you don't necessarily visualize what it looks like. So if somebody else is probably better suited to answering the question of like, what are the best YouTube channels to look at? And don't get me started on Instagram and TikTok. I like hardly among them anymore.

SPEAKER_00 46:25

And you kind of saying that you could buy the book, get hold of a V2, and then just sort of get cracking on your own, or you need someone to sort of show you the mechanics of it first off.

SPEAKER_01 46:37

I think it depends on how mechanically inclined you are. I I definitely feel like somebody who, you know, has a general intuition about physical reality and how to relate to that could totally learn just just from a book. I uh that being said, for me, it was a combination of having that book and having an online community to like when I did want real-time feedback, or I just wanted someone to look at my rock and tell me, is this good enough? Right. Because we are sometimes our own worst critics, right? And you know, you might be spending you know hours chasing what you think of our giant giant, uh, what do you call it, scratches, and you're you're there with the 20x sleep, and someone's like, no, really, it's not. But just having someone say, Oh, yeah, this is fine.

SPEAKER_00 47:21

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I see what you mean.

SPEAKER_01 47:24

Um, so I found that combination of like whatever platform you were on, whether it's Discord, Reddit, Instagram, Facebook, you'll be able to find some faceting group of peers to ask questions to. But I also think like going back and using the search bar, looking back on past discussion threads before you ask the same question for the 20th time that day. Yeah. I've seen I've seen those threads. Yeah. I think there's a wealth of resources online that you can really tap into.

SPEAKER_04 47:55

All right. So, Michelle, uh, how can people how can people find out more about you and your work? And are you currently taking commissions?

SPEAKER_01 48:06

Uh I would say I'm most active on Reddit these days. So as he's mentioned, the R slash shiny precious gems subreddit. It is a closed subreddit. So we're not accepting other lapidaries right now, but there are other active subreddits too. There's R slash fasting, R slash synthetic gemstones, and R slash gemstones, which are all, I think those are the most active larger subreddits. I also do have an Instagram, although I'm trying to um disentangle myself from Meta, so I'm not as active there. But you will see a lot more snippets of like my personal life and like who I am as a person through my Instagram stories. And on both Reddit and Instagram, I do accept commissions, and my commissions form is linked on my profile. I am generally always open to commissions, although depending on my workload or whether I have a day job, the lead time can vary. So right now I would say sometimes it's gotten as long as like nine months out. So always check. I usually try to keep it up to date and the commissions form what my expected lead time is.

SPEAKER_00 49:07

And the commissions can be you sourcing the rough or someone providing their own rough. Is that right?

SPEAKER_01 49:12

Correct. Correct. Um for synthetics, I typically source my own rough. For natural, it's a combination of both. And I also I I'll I'll post there, but there are some commissions for natural rough that I don't take, specifically for like teal sapphires or certain types of like specific colored sapphires. It's been very, very hard to find natural rough. Not just the demand is so large. Interesting. I am an individual buyer who doesn't go to Bangkok or Sri Lanka. So it's really, really hard for me to source some things. So I do have I do have rough, but I for those types of stones, I prefer to cut it how I want and then list them for sale rather than take specific commissions for them.

SPEAKER_04 49:53

Nice. And where can people find you for sale? Is it all the Reddits that we mentioned? Your Instagram?

SPEAKER_01 49:59

So usually I post to Reddit first and then I post to Instagram stories. And then if it's, you know, I'm I'm lazy about posting to like Instagram proper. I don't know, it just gives me anxiety. Yeah. Get the it meta-ic is what I call it. Uh yeah. Also, like because they they give you all the stats, and I hate seeing the stats go down in the user paper ads. So Reddit, I feel is a little bit more, you know, I post and then like it's out of sight, out of mind.

SPEAKER_04 50:25

Well, and it's also sold instantly, which I know because uh I'm constantly thinking I'm gonna be able to buy something and I'm always missing.

SPEAKER_03 50:34

I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 50:35

I don't know. It blows my mind. I'd like I still don't even understand the mechanics. How do I keep losing all these Tonga garnets?

SPEAKER_00 50:43

It's a race.

SPEAKER_01 50:44

I do say for Tonga, I do have quite a few larger garnets, so for now I do take commissions on them. Just interesting you should say that.

SPEAKER_04 50:52

I have a boyfriend who might like to hear that.

SPEAKER_00 50:55

Yeah, get a go get it.

SPEAKER_04 50:57

Well, Michelle, those are all of our questions. Is there anything about yourself or about gem cutting that we haven't touched on that you think it's important people know?

SPEAKER_01 51:04

Say, don't be scared. It can be a really intimidating art form to start with. If you're, again, cabochon making, I think is an underrated entry point. It will get you through the same general principles of like the polishing process. Sure, you're not playing with the angles as much, but the pro and the satisfaction of seeing something transformed from like a raw, rough pebble to a shiny stone that's suitable for use in jewelry. Um, and it's also like a lot more instant gratification. I think I finished my first one in like less than an hour. So if you're interested in the Labradory Arts, you're not yet ready to take the jump into faceting. I would I would look at cabs. Both I think machines are less expensive, and there's a lot more clubs that offer it. Amazing.

SPEAKER_04 51:47

Well, thank you so much, Michelle. Simon, thank you. Shall we say goodbye? And then sorry, I keep waving this ruler around as well.

SPEAKER_00 51:56

You have been doing that, to be fair.

SPEAKER_04 51:57

I have. Any dictatorial, what can we say? It's like a magic one. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 52:05

Yeah, no, so thank you very much indeed. That was really, really cool. And uh yeah, I've learned a lot.

SPEAKER_04 52:11

Yeah, same. Thank you so much for joining us, Michelle.

SPEAKER_02 52:14

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 52:16

See you.