Faceting a garnet.

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] good day there everyone and welcome to another gem cutting video my name is cliff i'm a gem cutter from australia and in today's episode we will be featuring road like garnet from the umber region of tanzania so to give you an idea of what part of africa these gems come from i'll include a map of tanzania and the region of the umber river [Music] for a long while now within the gem world the garnet for me has actually been my nemesis it's been a love-hate relationship the garnet it really has a lovely color but often when i go to facet it i'm fraught with all these little obstacles that it throws at me and as you'll find out in this video the curse of the garnet remains with me so before i start fastening let's go through the design sequence i'm using gem designing software called gem cut studio however in this case i'll be highlighting a design by a well-known gem cutter designer called jeff graham the name of this design is called rainbow and i'll drop in a link in the description area where you can get this design because you can get it on the internet for nothing so this particular design is an oval design where it features barrier facets on the pavilion and the rest of the facets are reminiscent of a standard round brilliant incidentally for those people who do not know who jeff graham is sadly jeff passed away quite a few years ago but within the world of faceting he is regarded as one of the best gem designers out there and he left a legacy of gem designs that you can download for nothing also there are a series of books that you do need to pay for but if you are a faceter and you really want to understand what good gem design is then i would highly recommend that you try some of jeff's designs [Music] so that's what the completed cut will look like and i will throw in a computer-generated gif of roughly what the gem would look like on completion [Music] this particular garnet was faceted during a online workshop with my faceting group unfortunately we are all in lock down here in southern australia in the state of victoria so our workshops we have to do online unfortunately we can't get out and about and see each other so to save time i decided to dot this particular gem with super glue normally i use a two-part epoxy called devcon and i allow the glue to set overnight so i get a firm attachment however in this case to save time i did use super glue also to give you a heads up after the transfer i get a detachment and then things really start to belly up and the curse of the garnet rears its ugly head and to add to the woes of this garnet there is some foreign material in it you'll see that later i thought it might have been magnetite but if you are a gemologist or a geologist leave a comment in the description area and let me know what you think it is [Music] so i'm currently grinding with a 600 grit topper lap and i'm just getting the pre-form of the gem then i'll go down to a very worn 800 grit lap and then i'll move on to a polish here you can see that i've cut the facets to a center point using a 600 grit diamond topper lap and you can start to see the foreign material within the gem those little black flecks so as you can see here i've gone over those same facets and i've used a 800 grit diamond topper lap which is quite worn out and then the next step will be to do a final polish i'm not going to do a pre-polish i'll be using a 50 000 grit diamond compound with the herco valve oil on a tin lap [Music] so as you can see here i've done a final polish on the first set of the pavilion then i'll cut in the girdle outline i'll form in the barium facets and then finally finishing up with the rest of the pavilion facets [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so as you could see in the previous scenes the pavilion has worked out well i've actually got some really nice meat points the design is working as it should and it's looking good so the next step is for me to do the secondary transfer but these days before i do the transfer i use these alignment blocks because i'm finding my transfer block or my transfer jig is not quite as accurate as it should be when i do the transfer and start fastening the crown in a nutshell there are two alignment blocks the first alignment block is bolted onto the dot stick as you can see me doing and then i'll level it out dead level on the master lap once the first alignment block is leveled on the master lap so it's just barely touching it then i'll remove the dof stick with the first alignment block attached to it and it will be placed into my original transfer jig now many of you have seen this process where i've used my original transfer jig or transfer block and then i attach another doff stick onto the gem and glue that back on so if you haven't seen that then i would advise you to watch some of my other videos and you'll just see where i use my original transfer block so once both dot sticks are glued onto the gem within the transfer block the dot sticks are removed the secondary alignment block is placed on the other side of the dot stick and levelled off onto the master plate so now the first alignment block that i put on and the original doff stick have been detached by heat so i've placed in the dop stick with the secondary alignment block into my quill and i've levelled it out onto my master plate so now i have a perfect transfer it's really important that you do get a perfect transfer because your crown facets will line up with the girdle outline and you really don't need to cheat as much all in all it just makes the whole process of faceting a lot easier so once again i'm using my 600 grit lap and i'm going to cut out the first set of crown facets so things are going really well getting great alignment then all of a sudden disaster strikes the gem detaches off the dop stick and this is the last thing you want for me a detachment of a gem is very rare so i've re-glued the gem back into the dopstick and as you can see it's a different color and this time i've used epoxy glue so the thing about a detachment once you've reattached the gem back onto the dot things will never be the same as they were every facet from now on will virtually have to be cheated in and even though things look okay the reality is that under a loop under magnification that there's going to be short fallings and this is a great example because as you get closer to faceting the table and getting to the top of the gym you'll find that the facets become more and more out of alignment and you can see here with the four facets that i'm cutting and polishing but they just don't align properly so i do have some issues with alignment as i gradually move up to fastening the crown i've got four little facets that i need to cut right now and because it's so small i'm not going to run the motor on my machine i'm just going to set the angle and just lightly rub across for 800 grit lap and that'll cut the next four facets down to depth if you've got really tiny facets this is a really good way to cut them in so as you can see before tiny facets have been cut in by hand with no assistance from the motor of the machine you'll also be able to see that these four facets don't meet or they're not matching up correctly and when i get onto the table i'll also find that the meat points of a table will not align and that's all because of detachment as you can see the table of the gem has now been cut and polished and some of the surrounding star facets just don't quite meet up that was to be expected i could cut those in by lowering the angle of the mast but it's a heck of a lot of work and i feel that it's just not worth the extra effort so coming up shortly you'll see the final reveal the gem will be seen on a rotator i'd like to thank all my regular subscribers and viewers but last but not least thank you to all my patrons it's your support and your pledges that really help maintain and improve this channel we've bought a webcam from your pledges and we've done some live streaming also i'll be buying a new camera from your pledges very soon so hopefully we can improve the video quality so to those people who want to become a patron it does help so until next time everybody take care and i'll see you later bye [Music] bye [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: Vintage Time

Views: 43,763

Keywords: faceting, garnets, gem cutting, gemstones, gems

Id: zkIKZ0I3j5Y

Length: 14min 0sec (840 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 17 2020