38. End of Season 1: Fashioning Part Two - Gemstone faceting techniques

This episode explores the intricate process of diamond manufacturing, from designing and marking to shaping, faceting, and polishing. Hosted by gemmologists Simon and Lucinda, it offers detailed insights into cutting techniques, tools, and the science behind creating stunning gemstones.

End of Season One. THANK YOU FOR LISTENING.

We will be back, enjoy your summer

 key  topics
Diamond designing and marking
Dividing and cleaving methods
Shaping and faceting techniques
Polishing and final finishing
Tools and equipment used in gem cutting

Mastering Diamond Cutting: From Rough to Brilliant
The Art and Science of Gemstone Faceting


 sound bites
"Only diamond can cut a diamond"
"Lasers cut diamonds in twenty minutes"
"Start with the pavilion, then the crown"


Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Gemmology and Diamond Manufacturing
02:35 The Process of Cutting Diamonds
05:13 Dividing and Shaping Diamonds
08:03 Bruting and Faceting Diamonds
10:28 The Role of Technology in Diamond Cutting
13:26 Understanding Diamond Facets and Angles
15:46 Lapidary: The Art of Gemstone Cutting
18:48 Understanding Facet Diagrams
21:24 Dopping Techniques and Adhesives
24:49 The Faceting Process Begins
28:19 Grit Sequence and Polishing
32:31 Cutting the Crown Facets
36:58 Final Steps and Reflections
39:49 Looking Ahead: Future Plans and Wrap-Up

 resources
Gemology Project - Facet Diagrams - https://gemologyproject.com
Ultratech Gem Faceting Machines - https://ultratec.com
Andrew Ian Brown's Gemstone Design Books - https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Andrew+Ian+Brown+gemstone+design


Instagram - https://instagram.com/gemmology_si

diamond manufacturing, gemmology, faceting, cutting techniques, gemstone design, diamond polishing, gemmology course, gemstone tools, gemmology education

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello and welcome to Fascination, a gemology podcast. My name is Simon.

SPEAKER_02 0:05

And I'm Lucinda.

SPEAKER_01 0:07

So last episode we spoke to you about fashioning gemstones and the stuff that's kind of in the course notes for GemA, gave you a bit of an overview, told you about different shapes and cuts and things like that.

SPEAKER_02 0:19

The basics.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

The b the basics, if you like.

SPEAKER_02 0:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

And it turned out that we were going on too long, so we cut it short and decided to make it a double header. Yeah, which gives you an extra episode until we go on our summer break. So lucky.

SPEAKER_02 0:34

A little cli the cliffhanger moment.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Yeah. But yes, so I've got some props to show you for this episode as well, because if anybody doesn't know just describe them though, because we are it it is a podcast. We can we can describe them as well, yeah. So I'm gonna show and describe.

SPEAKER_02 0:51

Show show and tell. Yes. In the truest sense of the term.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

Um so yeah, we're gonna talk to you about how to actually cut stones and the sort of process of doing that. The diamond manufacturing bit, we're gonna sort of take you through what it says in the course notes, because we don't actually know much about that. So I think for the code.

SPEAKER_02 1:11

Undersell yourself, Simon. We know as much as one would for having read it.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:20

We watched a YouTube video once.

SPEAKER_01 1:22

We don't we don't know how accurate that is to real life, because actually the course notes in Gemma about cutting coloured stones is all about the jam peg, which is not really relevant. So I mean it kind of is if you're like a traditionalist, which some people are, but yeah. Anyway.

SPEAKER_02 1:38

So, guys, we are talking, as Simon said, about diamond manufacturing. And the kind of question that's gonna sit over this part of the podcast is how do we cut around brilliant diamond, right? So many diamonds are cut from RBC, they're incredibly popular, they come in all shapes and sizes, and it's a really good way to illustrate how diamonds are cut. So, also just a side note, everything we're gonna talk about today, you need to learn to draw. And this is actually a really fun way to spend an afternoon in the pub is just drawing all of these different things.

SPEAKER_01 2:09

Everything you do is in the pub.

SPEAKER_02 2:10

Everything I do is in the pub. My boyfriend's a brewer, so I'm always in the pub. I was actually in the pub last night and I was saying to my new friend, I just love the pub. And she was like, I love the pub. So we love the pub.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

Drawing rambrillian cards.

SPEAKER_02 2:22

And drawing round brilliance. This was to get free beer when I was studying for my foundation. You had to come to the pub and listen to my lectures on gemology, so I would like to explain how something worked, and then if you understood it, you could have a free beer.

SPEAKER_01 2:35

Surely people just said, Yeah, I understand.

SPEAKER_02 2:37

Well, I made them explain it back to me so I could see how well I had explained it.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Understood. Okay, yeah, fine.

SPEAKER_02 2:42

So studying tip for anybody gearing up for their diplomas.

unknown 2:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

Yeah. I've got a shout out to uh say Charlemagne has been messaging us on the Instagram. Her and I had a chat about the band cap, tried to help her understand that. Not entirely sure I did a good job, but she was like, Thanks very much. So maybe I didn't. And yes, she's been commenting on a lot of the episodes on I think YouTube. So thanks for that. It's appreciated. Yes, thank you so much. Thanks for listening. Yep, she works in Chichester.

SPEAKER_02 3:10

Oh, cool. I love Chichester. It's near where my parents live.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

Yes, it's very nice actually.

SPEAKER_02 3:15

It's lovely. Anyway, back to Diamond Manufacture. So it follows a process, guys. We are going to talk about each of these in detail, but just so you know what is coming up, a little bit of a signpost. First, you've got designing and making, then dividing. Design and marking people designing and marking, sorry. Dividing, shaping, and fastening and polishing. I feel like that was a very confusing list, but I hope you guys are with me.

SPEAKER_01 3:36

Yep. And I one thing that we should remind you of, which is something we've been over before, is that only diamond can cut a diamond. And that's by exploiting the diamond crystal's differential hardness. And if you are unfamiliar with this concept, please see our durability episode, where I think that's where we speak about this. Differential hardness, meaning different directions across the diamond crystal are less hard, so you utilize the harder directions in the grid to cut through the softer directions on the diamond you're polishing and or cutting.

SPEAKER_02 4:11

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

Unless you're using a laser, then you uh don't need to.

SPEAKER_02 4:16

Then all bets are off. But that's what's what's the fun of a laser when you could smash a diamond against a diamond for ages?

SPEAKER_01 4:21

Yeah. Well, we're gonna talk about that.

SPEAKER_02 4:23

So first up, designing and marking. So this is very much the first stage. A diamond designer is gonna consider all of the elements that we talked about in last week's episode. So that is color, carrot, weight, yield, the shape of the rough, where the inclusions are. They're going to think about all of these things and assess the rough to work out how they can cut it to maximize profit and value. You want to lose as little as possible and make the most beautiful possible gemstone. Having made that decision, they're gonna mark the stone directly with Indian ink. And this is gonna indicate how and where the diamond is gonna be sawn or cleaved. These days there is a very clever computer program. It's called Sarin. It scans the rough and does all of this for you. So everything's like computer aided down to the last like millimeter so that you get as much yield as possible, the best possible diamond. And you have a story about the De Beers, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

I do, yeah. So if you do the Debeers pipeline course, there is a day where you get to play with the sarin technology and it basically scans the rough, and then you can say, I want to put a ovalcut in there, and it shoves an ovalcut with its best orientation and like maximizing like the edges and things. And then you can be like, right, put the next best stone in and it lumps another one in in the little gap that it's got, and then you can like you can keep you can keep going and shoving smaller and smaller stones in. I mean, that's probably not practical in the real world.

SPEAKER_03 5:50

It's quite a bit.

SPEAKER_01 5:51

It's kind of fun to keep sort of squeezing tiny, tiny little stones into the rough.

SPEAKER_02 5:55

And does it tell you, like, based on this rough, I think that you should go for an emerald cut, or is that something that you're doing?

SPEAKER_01 6:02

It basically helps you decide what shape is going to be best suited to that rough, and you can so I think you can sort of tell it about the inclusions and things. And you can more or less tell what the weight of the stone that you're going to get out of it once it's been cut is, and sort of an approximate colour clarity, because well, well, I suppose you've physically got the rough there, so you can determine the colour and the clarity. So it's kind of like it's it's definitely computer aided, you still need to have an expert there to assess things in real life because you know, me shoving lots of tiny, tiny little stones in every nook and cranny of the rough is not what you do. It was just kind of fun. Yeah, it's not best practice. If you go to my Instagram at Jamology Psy, Jomology underscore Psy, well it's that, then there is a little video of the of me playing with the Sarentech and me spinning the rough round on the computer screen. You can see all the tiny little stones that I've sort of shoved in and managed to get to fit in. It was really fun.

SPEAKER_02 6:58

Highly recommend this course, it seems. Like it seems like you get to do a lot of really cool stuff. Is it still running?

SPEAKER_01 7:03

Yeah, I I think so. And you have to have some sort of connection to Hatton Garden, I think, because it's it's run by like i it's like a charity thing, and they have to do it because they're uh they're part of the part of the area, and it's sort of an obligation to give back to the community. So if you apply and you've got so I mean it only has to be like a loose connection to Hatton Garden, like you use a supplier in Hatton Garden, for example. And Beth that runs the course, Beth West, is really very lovely. So you'll have a great week if you do do it.

SPEAKER_02 7:31

Awesome. Next up in our diamond process, we have designed and marked. Next, we're going to divide. Tell me about dividing, Simon.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

Yeah, so dividing is not applicable if you have a makeable stone, which is what we talked about last week. So if you've got a mackle that you can only really cut into one stone, you can't shove loads of other stones into every corner of it, and you're just going to cut like one emerald cut out of this quite clear, bright mackle that you have, then you're going to skip this step. But if you're not going to skip it, you will adopt one of these following methods. So the first method and the most traditional method is cleaving. And cleaving is quite risky, and we previously told you about this, is famously why Asher passed out upon striking the crucial blow to the culinary. Whether that's true or not, still in debate, but whatever.

SPEAKER_02 8:19

I wouldn't blame him if he did.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

So we've got cleaving, we've got soaring. This takes a very long time. We'll tell you about that. And then we've got laser cutting, which is probably the more modern way of doing things.

SPEAKER_02 8:29

Yes. So we're going to go a little bit more into detail about each of these methods. So first up, cleaving. This can only be carried out in the direction of cleavage. Obviously can the clue's in the name. And this is basically done by attaching the diamond to a cleaving stick, and then a small notch is cut into the stone with another diamond or a diamond saw. This notch is known as a curve, okay? Then you take a steel blade and you stick it in the curve. Okay. Then you take a mallet and you smack the steel blade, which in turn smacks the diamond in the curve, which causes the crystal to split along the cleavage plane. Easy peasy, right? There is, of course, a chance that your diamond is going to shatter into tiny bits that can never be recovered, but I think it's worth it for the crack.

SPEAKER_01 9:13

Yeah, there's no small element of danger with that, I don't think.

SPEAKER_02 9:16

That sounds so fun to me.

SPEAKER_01 9:19

Yeah. Wallop. Oh shit. That's gone horribly wrong.

SPEAKER_02 9:23

Imagine when it goes right though. It must be so satisfying.

SPEAKER_01 9:25

Yeah, it must, especially if you've got a whacking great big button and it just goes into bits. The bits that you want it to go into. Yes. But the key things to remember here are the terminology, so you need to know the term curve. Yes. Which is the little notch that you cut into the into the diamond. Remember that. Kerf. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:42

Alright, what's next?

SPEAKER_01 9:44

Next is soaring. So you can saw a diamond, and uh the key thing to remember here from the course notes is that you use a phosphor bronze cutting disc coated with diamond powder. You kind of get that rotating and going about its business, and it you can kind of leave it. You have like these these diamond cutting factories, they might have lots and lots of these stones, all with these blades running at once, and they're cutting away at stones, and you might just have one guy just walking up and down the line of them, just checking nothing's going wrong. And the reason for that is that it takes an extremely long time. It a one carat stone can take several hours, even up to a day, for the blade to actually get through it. And this is just a one carat stone. So we're talking a long, long process.

SPEAKER_02 10:28

Yes. This is why everyone was so excited when lasers became a thing, laser cutting. Essentially, a laser of around 0.001 millimeters in diameter can vaporize the bonds in a diamond, right? It can do it in any direction. And that process that Son was talking about that can take days is now reduced to several, not even several hours, it's 20 minutes, right? You can cut a diamond in 20 minutes, which is crazy. The only drawback is that it leaves a dark burnt surface, not technically burnt, but like burn-like, but this gets polished right off. So the minute that this happens, you're like you're fine. So you've got you've got lasers now, it's fast, it's easy, it's all planned by computers, and uh much less manpower needed.

SPEAKER_01 11:09

Aaron Powell Yeah, I don't really know how many stones are laser cut nowadays versus the traditional method. I'm sure that traditional method still does go on because like there must be these things set up and they're just like whizzing away. Like, you know, just because it takes a long time doesn't mean it's not worth doing. Because if you've got it the setup there, you might as well, you know, carry on doing it as you were.

SPEAKER_02 11:28

I'm sure it still happens like mine side and in the big cutting centers and things like that.

SPEAKER_01 11:32

I'm sure lasers are expensive too.

SPEAKER_02 11:34

Yes, I'm sure they are. Alright, what's next?

SPEAKER_01 11:37

What's next in our Next up is the bruting, the shaping. Shaping. Shaping the shaping of the stone. And the shaping of the stone takes place by bruting. This is like true for a round brilliant cut, basically. So bruting is the name given to shaping the outer girdle edge of the diamond. You remember last week we told you that the outer edge of the diamond is called the girdle? Well, we're going to shape the the rough outline of the stone via bruoting. And it's basically conducted by binning one diamond and then spinning another diamond, and then rr so you have a sacrificial diamond and you have the diamond that you are trying to brute or round or or form an outline of, and you just grind them against each other.

SPEAKER_02 12:16

Love it.

SPEAKER_01 12:17

They sort of they move back and forth and forward and back or whatever, so you can make sure you're, you know, getting the right shape and things, but it's more or less just grinding one diamond against another, which seems utterly mad, but that's that's what happens.

SPEAKER_02 12:31

That's how you get the job done.

SPEAKER_01 12:32

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 12:33

So now that you've got the kind of rough outline of your stone, you need to facet this motherfucker. And the way that you're gonna do this is by using a cast iron disc. This disc is gonna be charged with diamond grit and oil. It's known as a scafe, which always reminds me of scabies, but it's not.

SPEAKER_00 12:47

I thought it was a scap.

SPEAKER_02 12:49

Scafe?

SPEAKER_00 12:50

Scafe.

SPEAKER_02 12:51

Scafe. It sounds less like scaby. So let's go scafe.

SPEAKER_00 12:54

Scafe.

SPEAKER_02 12:55

So this scape is mounted on a bench horizontally and it rotates at about 200, 2,500 rpm. Different grades of grit are used at each part of this process. It's like around 1200 grit to begin with, followed by about 3,500, or is that 350?

SPEAKER_01 13:12

300 to 5,000.

SPEAKER_02 13:13

3 to 5,000.

SPEAKER_01 13:16

And then the final polish is done at about 100,000 grit, which is like very, very, very, very fine diamond powder. But then that's what's required to get a good polish on a on a diamond.

SPEAKER_02 13:26

Now the DOP is holding the diamond, which in turn is held in a tang. You do need to remember these guys. The tang is a two-legged handpiece and it forms a tripod with a DOB. I'm trying to do it with my hand like that.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

Yes, you've got to two and then DOP creates the the the extra third leg.

SPEAKER_02 13:44

Exactly. And the angles are controlled by the tang, and that determines how the diamond is presented to the scafe and produces the facets. So tell me about the facets on a diamond, Simon. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 13:56

So a round billing cut diamond has facets as follows. In total, it has 57 facets, or 58 if it has a Q-Afacet. We told you about that last week, where you cut the bottom off. And the first set of facets is applied by somebody by the name of a crossworker. They start with the table. The table's the flat, the flat top. They grind a flat surface on this sort of rounded outline shape of a of a stone that they that they've bruted. And then they do eight pavilion facets, so the pavilion's the bottom half. And they do eight crown facets. That's the end of the crossworker's job. Good good work. Thanks very much. Move on to the next one.

SPEAKER_02 14:31

Yep. This diamond is going to go on to a brilliant year, which is like the best job title ever. It is their job to apply eight star facets, 16 upper girdle facets, and 16 lower girdle facets. So these upper and lower girdle facets are commonly referred to as the break facets because they basically break up the sharp edges and junctions between the main facets and the girdle. And we've got some bad news for you guys. We're going to hit you with some percentages that you're going to need to remember and you actually do need to remember this.

SPEAKER_01 15:00

Yes. So the important angles and proportions to remember for an excellent cut grade on a diamond certificate when the stone is a round pulley and cut that will maximize your total internal reflection. Also see a previous episode. Are as follows. Crown angle, 30 to 35 degrees.

SPEAKER_02 15:20

Crown height, 11 to 16% degrees.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

Pavilion angle 41 to 42 degrees. Now that's the really important one. Yeah. Your pavilion angle needs to be 41 to 42 degrees to get that total internal reflection. So that's a that's a critical one. But you just still need to remember the rest of them.

SPEAKER_02 15:39

Pavilion depth, 43 to 45%.

SPEAKER_01 15:43

Table width, 54 to 66%.

SPEAKER_02 15:46

Girdle thickness, thin to slightly deep.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

None to very small.

SPEAKER_02 15:50

We they gotta get us on the BBC. We're so good at this.

SPEAKER_01 15:53

Yeah. So the the so when we're talking about obviously angles, they are they're just angles. But when we're talking about percentage, like the table percentage, for example, the table width, we're talking the percentage width of the overall diameter of the stone. So 54 to 66%. It takes up 54 to 66% of the total diameter of the stone. That's one. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:14

And remember, guys, learn to draw it. I would say I we definitely did have to draw this at some stage.

SPEAKER_01 16:20

100%. Well I've drawn plenty of round bullion cards. So you've got you've got to know how to do that.

SPEAKER_02 16:24

They don't even have to be perfect, guys. They just have to have the right perception.

SPEAKER_01 16:28

The facets in the right place. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:29

Yep. Great. All right. Now we're moving on to kind of Simon's his bread, his butter, his obsession at the moment, and that is lipidary. Do you want to kick kick us off, Simon?

SPEAKER_01 16:39

Let's talk about lipidary, my favourite topic of conversation at the moment. So I might have mentioned it before. I've been cutting some stones. I don't in any way, I promise you, profess to be any sort of expert. So our previous guests that we've had on have covered most of this much better than I ever could, but we'll go over things just so you sort of have an idea. And like, because sometimes it's nice to hear from somebody that's just sort of like finding their way because, you know, it's not intimidating, because like my knowledge is not intimidating in this sense, I promise you.

SPEAKER_02 17:08

And guys, follow Simon's progress on Instagram at GemologySci.

SPEAKER_01 17:11

Yeah. My progress, which is stilting at the moment because I don't have enough time, but I'm I'm getting somewhere. So basically, as we said, the process of lipidry is very similar to Dime of Fan Manufacturer, but we're not allowed to call it the same because time is very special and they must be treated and referred to very differently. So same, same, same. We still assess the rough. We need to make sure we're going to avoid any inclusions, any tricky cleavage orientations, work out what's best for the yield. So, like I said in the previous episode, you've got to have one of these big silver torches. You want one of them so you can shine, shine into the rough and get a look at look at it inside high RI fluids that maybe are not toxic because that's not good. And some of the ones that I have been told to use or recommended to use are glycerin. That's a good one. So you can drop your stone in glycerin, that's gonna help you see inside the stone more. Or cinnamon oil, apparently.

SPEAKER_02 18:03

Interesting. So you can make a diffuser in the morning and and cut a stone at night.

SPEAKER_01 18:07

Yeah, cinnamon oil also has the added benefit of smelling quite nice. So that's probably the one to recommend.

SPEAKER_02 18:12

Nice.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

So what what else? What else do we need?

SPEAKER_02 18:15

Well, once you've decided the shape you're gonna cut, guys, you need a facet diagram. So Andrew Ian Brown.

SPEAKER_01 18:22

Here comes one of the props.

SPEAKER_02 18:24

He's got one. He's got one.

SPEAKER_01 18:27

Tell us about Andrew Ian Brown.

SPEAKER_02 18:29

He's a very famous gemstone designer, and he has a series of books with a lot of designs in them. Simon recommends starting with 12 easy gemstone faceting designs. Easy is debatable, but when you're at Simon's level, everything's hard. But if you follow the steps and most importantly, the information about where, how, and when the facets should meet one another, you can get to work.

SPEAKER_01 18:48

Yeah. So basically I have here a facet diagram if you haven't seen one. I don't know if you can see that. I'll post this on the Instagram actually. And basically, what's nice about facet diagrams is that they are quite easily available online. There's a place called Jamology Project, and you can search them up and look for them. You can see all sorts of different designs. But this book is quite handy because you know it's quite nice to have sort of physical things that you can look at. And it shows you a diagram of the stone, it tells you what index to use, it tells you how many facets, how many pavilion facets, girdle facets, crown facets, it tells you the table to width ratio and uh like length to width ratio, all of this stuff. It's got all the information you need and a quite handy order to go through for when you're going to cut. So you start with the P1s, that's the pavilion one facets, and go through them in sequence, and then it tells you where to meet. So sometimes it might say meet the girdle, sometimes it might say meet the previous facets that you've that you've cut, establish a level girdle, maintain a level girdle, that sort of stuff. I've I've learned to my yeah, I've learned by making multiple mistakes that actually following the instructions is quite important.

SPEAKER_02 20:01

I see it's one of those hobbies.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

Yeah. Because you know, sometimes you think, oh, I don't need to I just gonna do whatever. As long as the girdle's straight, it's fine. But actually you found out that your your facets don't actually meet what they're supposed to, and you're like, dear, I've done it wrong again.

SPEAKER_02 20:17

So What would you say? Did you start doing round brilliance or what's what shape did you start with?

SPEAKER_01 20:21

First stone I cut was from another book, actually, Tom Herbst's book, which is amateur gemstone faceting or something. Amateur gemstone cutting techniques, the one that Michelle talked about. And he has a stone that he kind of walks you through, and it's called gemstone 101. That was the first stone I cut, and it's kind of a hexagonal outline.

SPEAKER_03 20:43

Nice.

SPEAKER_01 20:44

Yeah, it's quite nice. I sort of had varying degrees of success with that, but that was the first one I did completely solo.

SPEAKER_02 20:50

Uh I'm very proud of you, Simon. And the gr the other good thing about Simon is when he decides to do something, he gets all the literature. You have like every book, you really research it and read it, and it's it's a good ha good habit.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

Yeah, I mean it's it's it's an expensive habit occasionally.

SPEAKER_02 21:06

And also when you start getting to like out-of-print books, rare books.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

Yeah, so yeah, and you start running out of room and things in your house and things like that. But you know, it's it's all good.

SPEAKER_02 21:17

Good for the love of the game, we gotta do it.

SPEAKER_01 21:19

So yeah, you're faceting, you want you need your facet diagram, and then you're ready to go. So what comes next?

SPEAKER_02 21:25

Next is dopping. Not doping, guys, doping. So uh attaching the rough to a short metal rod, basically. This is known as a dop. Simon uses glue. He likes a UV curing glue, but he also uses cynoacrylate glue.

SPEAKER_01 21:42

Cyanoacrylate, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:44

And you've tried an epoxy. Tell us about your experiences with these glues.

SPEAKER_01 21:47

Yeah, so basically I I like this. This is the this is the uh UV curing glue.

SPEAKER_02 21:53

So he's holding up a bottle with a blue label for those of you who are.

SPEAKER_01 21:56

I'm holding up a UV curing adhesive, yeah. Uh that's that's quite good because it sort of hardens quite quickly when you shine the UV on it and it doesn't harden without you shining the UV on it, so you can still move stuff around a little bit. The cyano acryla is basically just super glue. That's also in this little pot here. I'm holding up a pot of glue. That's that's quite good too, but you need to leave it for like 12 hours or something. So if you actually want to get cracking with cutting something, then that takes quite a long time. And then the epoxy, I found out that if you don't mix the two parts of the epoxy very well, it doesn't actually stick. Because I was cutting something once and I saw the stone just sort of like coming away from the top, and I was like, oh dear, that's not good. But that's probably that's probably my more my problem than the glues because you know I didn't mix it. I didn't mix it properly.

SPEAKER_02 22:49

Traditionally lapidorays would use wax. So why are you not why are you not sticking with the ancient ways, Simon?

SPEAKER_01 22:55

Okay, so I've got some wax here. It's red wax, it's a small sort of disc of wax. It kind of when it when it arrived, it was the dustiest thing I've ever seen. It's like it had been excavated from some ancient Egyptian tomb, which nobody warned me about. So that is a great tip. If you order wax, it's gonna arrive dusty. So don't open it in the kitchen and get told off by your wife.

SPEAKER_02 23:17

I'm sensing a personal story here. And didn't just did Justin tell you about something about wax as well?

SPEAKER_01 23:24

He did, yeah. So the the the problem I've had with wax, and maybe it's because I'm using red wax, some people use black and there's green wax. I think it's how quickly it hardens. You have to heat it up, and then basically the wax sort of starts dripping, you have to like drip it onto the stone and then attach the attach the dot to it, and then you have to heat it up again to soften, re-soften the wax, and it's like super complicated, and you wind up getting burnt and dripping wax all over the place. I think it's because I've got red wax. I think that was an error. Okay, the black wax hardens a bit slower. But Justin was telling me at the Valuers Conference that you need to get to grip with grips with wax if you're going to uh start recutting, or you know, if a stone's got a chip on it and you want to sort of cut the chip away, you need to be able to wax it because uh you need to be able to move the stone after it's dopped. So you're not having so once you've glued something onto the dop like this, it's it's it's glued. And the only way of getting it off is putting it in acetone and sort of unsetting it from the dop. Whereas if you've got wax, all you have to do is apply a bit of heat. You can sort of nudge the stone about a little bit and sort of move it around in the wax, because once the wax is warm, it's gonna have some give in it.

SPEAKER_02 24:36

Yeah. Now, of course, to do any of this, you need a flat surface, right? Because you need something to attach the dop to. And to do this, you're basically gonna hold the rough in your fingers and just grind away on a diamond disc, right? At 320 to 600 grit.

SPEAKER_01 24:49

Yeah, more or less. You just basic you basically just want to figure out where you want to put the table, grind away a flat onto it.

SPEAKER_02 24:55

Then what's what's next in our journey for this down?

SPEAKER_01 24:58

So you have a thing called a transfer jig, which is a contraption that has like two moving bits of metal that you stick the dot into, and you can stick another dot into, and they sort of come together and meet one another in the middle, perfectly aligned, which is very handy. But when you're doing the first the first dopping, you kind of stick your uh stone in position with a bit of putty or something like that. Make sure you've got it level so that the dot connects with the stone flat. Drop a blob of glue onto the flat surface, make sure it's centered, lower the lower the dot to make contact, and then leave it, leave it to set, or blast it with the UV torch if you've got the UV curing stuff.

SPEAKER_02 25:37

Nice. Now, in terms of the machinery that you're using, so Simon is using Justin Prim's favorite machine, which is a handpiece, versus Michelle Aria. Michelle and Aria were kind of telling us about a more precise V5 Ultra Tech. So what's kind of the difference? And do you regret your decisions?

SPEAKER_01 25:55

No, not really. So the difference is that the V5, like the the American-made machines, are so the the quill and the hand and the and the thing that holds the DOP is attached to a mast. So it's a it's a rigid thing, and you can slide it forward and back and uh yeah, present the present the stone to the to the disc at different angles, and it's attached to a mask. The hand piece is completely independent. I'm holding the handpiece up, and it's more or less like a dop tang type thing. Rather than it only having two legs, it has its own three, and the stone is stuck on the end just there. So I'm holding this up, and then you've got your uh sort of index thing which you can turn and rotate the stone, get that in focus, so you can sort of spin the stone round like so for the different sort of angles. So this gets you place this three-legged thing on a table that's level, and then angle the stone towards the towards the disc to uh to grind away at it. Whereas the other one is a bit more precise, it has a digital readout for the angles. This just has a little gauge that you have to sort of eyeball. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:02

Okay, cool. So what are you like looking for?

SPEAKER_01 27:05

So once you've got your stone on your dot, like so, you're going to stick it in the end of the of the of the faceting machine that you use into the quill, and this has a series of indices on it, though. So the most common one is one to ninety-six, so it's got ninety a 96 index gear, and these numbers relate to the rotation of the stone. So 96 is directly opposite 48, so on and so forth. Yeah. So if you're cutting a square stone, for example, one girdle edge will be at 96, and the opposite flat girdle edge will be at 48, so on and so forth. Yeah? Okay. Pretty straightforward. And then there's the angles. So the angles go sort of up and down. So if you can see on if you can see us, I've got this one set at naught degrees at the moment. So that means that the dot is sticking straight out from the quill, and it's all horizontal to the whole handpiece. Yeah, so that's naught degrees. 90 degrees would be pointing straight down at 90 degrees. Figure that out. Look at that. Bosch. So now it's pointing straight down. Yeah. So, and then we have all the different angles in between. Yeah. So if you're watching this, you can see it going from 0 degrees to 90 degrees.

SPEAKER_02 28:19

Nice one. And so basically, once you've got this figured out, you're just simply following the process of the diagram. So facet by facet, angle and index all around the stones until the points of each facet meet where they're supposed to. These are called the meat points. Michelle actually introduces to this term. She is not so meticulously obsessed about her meat points, she says, but they're pretty amazing, to be honest. So generally you start by roughly applying these to create the broad outline of the finished stone. This is called a preform. And then you start to get more specific as you progress through the grit sequence. Tell me about the grit sequence.

SPEAKER_01 28:53

Yeah, so you would ordinarily start with a pavilion. There is a bit of debate in the fasting world about which side to start with, but most of the facet diagrams suggest you start with a pavilion. And to me, it makes most sense to start with the pavilion because it's the deeper side, and judging how much room to leave for the crown, which is much shallower, becomes a bit easier. My first stone I cut, I didn't leave any room for the crown. So I basically only had half a gemstone and then kind of like a flat bit on the top with no room to cut any crown on. So don't do that. First of all, we start so usually we start with about 600 grit to get the facets sort of kind of in place in the girdle outline, etc. etc. We then progress to like a 1200 grit to tighten everything up, get the facets to meet a bit a bit closer. We don't have to be perfect at this point, but getting very, very, very, very close. And then at 3000 grit, which is your pre-polish, which is a very, very important stage, you want to make sure all of those facets are more or less meeting perfectly and all together. And then when you do the final polish, because the final polish is at such a high grit, it's not really cutting so much anymore. You're kind of just just giving a polish. So you're not moving, moving meats around so much. They're more or less going to be in place by the by the pre-polish. And this whole process is lubricated, so you're lubricating your diamond disc with a slow sort of water drip.

SPEAKER_02 30:14

And is that something you're doing by hand, like juggling water onto it?

SPEAKER_01 30:19

No. So you've got like a little bucket that's attached to the top of the machine with a little with a little drip thing on it and a little tap. So you can you adjust it, you adjust the tap to to uh increase the dripping. Don't let it get too dry, it makes an awful, awful sound.

SPEAKER_02 30:34

Yeah, I can imagine. And then when you're doing this final polish, what is this?

SPEAKER_01 30:39

What yeah, so the final the final polish is obviously the most crucial thing and also the most difficult thing. The the polishing lap of choice for most faceters I have found from pretty much asking anyone, is called the Bat Lap. That's a B-A-T-T, and it's from a company called Gear Loose, they're American. Uh, if you want to buy one, it's on the Ultratech website, I think is the best place to get it, because Gear Loose are uh going through some things to get restarted for shipping and things like that. So go to Ultratech's website and you can get one of them. Mine is charged with 60,000 grit. So this tiny little thing here, which looks like a so I'm holding up now something that looks like a uh what you call those things you put on your lips? Lip seal type thing. Chapstick, yep, that kind of thing. That's 60,000 diamond grit in a stick, and you kind of rub it you rub it on the uh on the lap with a bit of oil, move it around with your fingers, and then hey pressed O, you can you can polish. Unless of course you've got quartz, which is impossible to polish.

SPEAKER_02 31:33

Tell me more.

SPEAKER_01 31:34

Well, so I have cut a couple of quartz and had to abandon them because I've chipped them because they're so hard and like they take forever, ever, ever to get a polish. I'm led to believe that if you use cerium oxide, which also comes in like a little thing, like just a slightly bigger one, cerium oxide does a uh does a good polish on quartz and you use a perspective slap for that. Some people actually use the back of a C D. I don't know if I mentioned that in the last episode. Sorry.

SPEAKER_02 31:58

Yes, you did. Didn't Michelle say that she hates quartz and she never works with it?

SPEAKER_01 32:02

I I don't know anyone that doesn't hate quartz, everyone I've spoken to. Someone actually told me once that it's it was like a gatekeeping thing. So you tell beginners to use quartz as their stones so they wouldn't get into faceting. So you could keep it like this closed community. Well, that's not me. I want everyone to facet stones. Don't start quartz, it'll put you off.

SPEAKER_02 32:20

So you've got everything bright and reflective, but you guys remember we've only done the pavilion of the stone, right? So we have got the pavilion perfect, but the crown is still looking rough as fat. So what's next?

SPEAKER_01 32:32

So we go back to that transfer jig thingy, which is over there. I haven't brought that over to show you. I can send a picture. And you put the dot in the top bit that's got the stone attached to it, and then you put the glue on the other dot that you're gonna use. So the other dot that you use, so obviously now you've got a pavilion, so it's coming to a point if you've got like a round stone or something. So now you're going to need a uh cone-shaped dop, so something that's going to receive the point of the stone. Uh, another mistake I made is that obviously if you're shoving a sharp point into a metallic cone, as it were, that could damage your sharp point. And that's happened to me. I cut a stone and the bottom of the bloody Q-A got chipped off because I was shoving it deep into this into this cone dob.

SPEAKER_02 33:18

Gotta be gentle.

SPEAKER_01 33:19

So a tip for you is to put a tiny, tiny, tiny little bit of blue-tack in the bottom to protect the point. Also, blue tack's so useful. Isn't it? So, yeah, just basically glu glue in the thing with your blue-tack, swap it over, leave it to leave it to set. Job's a good one.

SPEAKER_02 33:35

Excellent. And then you start cutting. So tell us more.

SPEAKER_01 33:38

Uh yeah, so make sure so when you have redopped your stone, something you need to do is obviously unattach the first dop, which is an interesting process. You get a wet piece of kitchen towel, you will wrap it around the stone to keep it cool because you're gonna apply heat now. And then so you've got your wet towel around the stone and the dop that you want to maintain, your cone dop, which is attached to the pavilion, and then you're gonna basically dangle the other dot, the dot that you don't need anymore, over a flame until it gets hot, and then it's just about still not too hot to touch when it's kind of done its job, and you can sort of bend it off the stone. But you're keeping the other half of the st the other half nice and cool with your wet kitchen towel.

SPEAKER_02 34:25

It's all very it's very ancient feeling, isn't it? There's wax and fire and diamond.

SPEAKER_01 34:30

Yeah, but I don't I don't know any other way of doing it because you've obviously if you're if you put like acetone or anything to get rid of the glue, then you're gonna just you might ruin the glue on the opposite side. So the f the fire trick works fine and it's quick and you might leave a bit of glue left on the stone, but that's fine. You can cut through the glue with your with your disc.

SPEAKER_02 34:46

Sorry, there's a dead fly in my wine. RIP friend.

SPEAKER_01 34:49

And then so this is a very important thing. So when you've got your stone back in the quill, back in your faceting machine, you then need to make sure you're going to be faceting all of the crown facets in the same place as the pavilion ones. So you basically want to you want to get your quill to zero degrees so it's pointing straight out, and then present it to like the master lap, which is a lap that doesn't have any powder on it. It's what the the the cutting laps sit on top of, and it's not gonna sort of damage the stone in any way. And make sure it's sitting flat on one of the facets. So you need to make sure your index is at the right place. So let's go back to a square stone, for example, and one of our girdle facets is going to be at 96. So set the index to 96, put the quill in so that you kind of think that the stone is presenting 96 on a flat edge, and then lay it on the master lap and rotate it around until it you can't see any light across the entire girdle. So it is literally flat on the thing, and then you can tighten everything up and you're kind of good to go to start your start your crown facets.

SPEAKER_02 35:55

Is it more stressful cutting the crown facets because you've already invested so much time in the stone, or is it still pretty 100%, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:02

I'm kind of scared of doing crown facets. I kind of because I I've cut stones and they've gotten increasingly smaller because I keep like making fatal errors. And mostly the fatal errors mostly the fatal errors I make are cutting things either at the wrong index or at the wrong angle. And that's purely a concentration thing or a reading thing. I'm reading the wrong number or I'm not concentrating or I'm not checking that I've so definitely you know that that that motto, check twice, cut once. This applies here like like beyond anything else, because if you cut something at the wrong facet, then you effectively have to go and start all over again to get everything back in line.

SPEAKER_02 36:44

Irritating. But pr I imagine pretty fun when you get it right.

SPEAKER_01 36:47

Pretty fun when you get him right. I'll let you know when that is.

SPEAKER_02 36:50

So let's say hypothetically Simon has successfully cut some crown facets. It is time once again to initiate the grit sequence.

SPEAKER_01 36:58

Yes, so we're back to our 600, 1200, 3000, and then the polish. I did cut an aquamarine the other day, which is the only stone I've really cut to a relatively decent standard. I put a picture of it on my Instagram, and I used a 5,000 grit on a copper lab, and that was must I I must say, lovely.

SPEAKER_03 37:18

Really?

SPEAKER_01 37:18

Charlie Charlie Bexfield put me onto that. He saw one available on a Facebook group and he was like, You should buy this, it will help you out. And props to him because it really did, because yeah, cutting on copper just feels really lovely and smooth and nice. So yeah, get yourself a copper lap if you can, because it just feels so much better than like the sort of grinding on the on the diamond grit stuff.

SPEAKER_02 37:40

Excellent. And so if you do manage to finish everything with no errors, you're gonna put the whole thing in some acetone to break down the glue, leave it overnight, and the next day you've got a new gemstone. It's pretty pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01 37:51

Pretty simple. Yeah. It's actually not it's actually not that difficult. Like the pro the process isn't difficult. If someone tells you how to use a machine and like the mechanics of cutting facets onto a gemstone, that bit is relatively straightforward. The concentration, the time, the investment, the panic and anxiety is the thing that's difficult, I think.

SPEAKER_02 38:15

So patience and perseverance, just like in Boleyn, if that's what you want.

SPEAKER_01 38:19

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 38:20

Excellent.

SPEAKER_01 38:22

But yeah, if you uh disagree with anything I've said today, then I welcome the the assistance and the the correction because I would like you to help me in any way with this. Because I'm I'm trying to get better, I'm trying to learn. I keep buying rough and I'm building up quite a collection, so I need to find more time to cut it. Otherwise, I'm just gonna have loads and loads and loads of rough stones. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:46

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is fashioning for diploma. Woohoo!

SPEAKER_01 38:50

Yeah, so you actually you probably have a better understanding of faceting and lipidary than you need for the diploma, but also it maybe will encourage you to get a machine, get in touch, chat about it, and see if you want to give it a go.

SPEAKER_02 39:02

Definitely. And guys, a lot of it is again like the vocab, understanding the process, understanding that you do an entire pavilion, polish it, and then you do the crown, polish it. You're not doing everything at once in the way that you might expect.

SPEAKER_01 39:17

That's the thing, that's the thing that you know they say in the course notes, and they talk about a jam peg as well, which is a which is like an old-fashioned machine which is for a wooden dop, which you poke in various different holes to give you the angles. That's kind of something you need to know. I'd be surprised if you get many questions on that. But like a cutting sequence, for example, might be something you get a question on, and you can say that you know you start with a pavilion, different grits, grit sequence, and yeah, that's important to me.

SPEAKER_02 39:43

That's my new favorite. I'm gonna tell Jake to initiate the grit sequence and see what he thinks it is. See what he says. Well, guys, we are going to be taking some time off for the summer, so consider this the end of season one of Fascination. As we said last week, we are still gonna be on Instagram, we're still gonna be chatting to some people. We've got some really actually quite exciting updates from some of our past guests lined up. So we will be here and there over the summer. Every week I'm going to try and flag up an old episode for you guys so that you, if you missed any or you've joined us a little bit later, you know what we've got cooking for you. Uh, we're gonna miss you. So stay in touch with us, please.

SPEAKER_01 40:22

Yeah, and I know the exams are coming up towards the end of June, the diploma exams for GemA, that is. So if you've got any questions in the meantime, we will be around to answer. I am going to Oregon on Monday for a couple of weeks. And I'm going to see if I can dig up some sunstone, some Oregon sunstone, which I will bring back home and try and facet. So that's pretty exciting stuff. What are you up to over the summer?

SPEAKER_02 40:48

I'm going to be going to LA and San Diego. So I'll be visiting the tourmaline mines that I would not shut up about.

SPEAKER_01 40:54

Are you actually going to see the tourmaline mines? That's pretty easy.

SPEAKER_02 40:56

Oh, yeah. I'm going to make Jake you go with me.

SPEAKER_01 40:59

Fantastic. That's really cool. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:01

Well, I kind of figure like I love tourmaline. I love history, and I love San Diego. So it just seems like I have to do it.

SPEAKER_01 41:07

100%. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:09

Well I'm definitely psyched.

SPEAKER_01 41:10

We will keep you posted on Instagram about our findings when we go on our our various mind trips as well.

SPEAKER_02 41:17

We will indeed. And do not worry, guys, we will be back after the summer. We're going to be spending the summer putting together some really exciting new episodes for you. I'm doing some deep dives on Sri Lanka and Burma, which will hopefully unveil some pretty exciting gem stories to come back with. We've heard your cries. We are putting together some diamond episodes. That might be kind of first in the docket when we get back. But uh yeah, we'll miss you guys. So stay in touch. We'll be here.

SPEAKER_01 41:42

Yeah, 100%. Good luck with your exams if you're taking them. Good luck with the summer. Good luck with bearing the heat. All of that sort of stuff. And uh yeah, we'll be back with an interview or two over the summer. But for now, adios and adieu.

SPEAKER_02 41:56

Enjoy the gems. Always.