Gem Cutting Tutorial: Lab Created Ruby

[Music] hmm [Music] [Music] papa [Music] okay i have two bowls half bowls of uh lab created corundum uh for a ruby that i want to cut this one i got many years ago from jeff graham and this one i got from joe h i'm not sure which one's going to cut a better colored ruby so i'm going to cut one and then maybe later i'll cut the other one and just see compare them so i get knowing for the future which one cuts what color of a ruby when we're done there's a lot of material here i just need a a small piece for the project i'm working on for both pete again the way the these are produced is uh it's a whole this would be one half of the bull because of the pressure inside there they're usually split for corundum for spinel they're often i can get a whole bull without it being split but this is the way corundum is produced in the lab and sometimes things go wrong and or right as you might say so this piece of pink uh corundum pink sapphire i got many years ago it was a it was a deformed uh lab project that uh went awry and formed a blob instead of a bull and so i bought it up again i got this from jeff graham also many years ago and eventually i'll cut it uh what i want to do with this just for so you guys know for a future future uh kind of a spoiler alert is i want to cut as big as possible a piece because you can't cut uh this corundum uh in a big piece if you get a normal bowl you're not gonna have the size so this this uh lab experiment gone wrong is going to allow me to make a gigantic piece of pink sapphire lab created so if you have any ideas of what design i should use what type of design i should use on this piece please let me know in the comments uh it keeps sitting in my box of rough uh in my to be cut someday list and eventually i need to cut it so again the goal here is going to be max uh make a large stone a lot of yield because you can't if i would have bought pink sapphire in a half bowl i would have ended up with something this size or this size and then i'll cut a piece off of one of these and and cut our corundum and then maybe later i'll cut the other my other piece of rough and cut another corundum and compare the two stones i believe i'll cut the darker of these bowls uh for bulpie and maybe later i'll come back and cut the cranberry colored one and then compare the two and let bobby compare them to see which one we like better for lab created ruby for the future now for a design i have several rectangular or emerald shaped designs that i've cut before including golden steps the standard oblong step cut with cut corners and ideal emerald 133 i've cut each of these designs before and i like them all and i've previously made videos of cutting these designs so if you want to see the designs you can refer back to those videos i think i'll use gem cut studio or the gcs computer program to evaluate the performance of each of these designs and then select the design that gives the best face up brightness for corundum ruby in the interest of time i won't go through the steps here in showing you how to use gcs to evaluate the performance of a design for a particular refractive index as i've made tutorial videos on this feature of gcs before if you want to learn how the tilt performance feature of gcs or the other features work here's a link to a gcs playlist that i created where i link all the gcs tutorials that i know of from youtube whether i created them or somebody else the winning design is the standard oblong step cut with cut corners design this design gives the best performance when evaluated by gcs for ruby corundum now everyone may have their own view of what best performance means there was even a recent discussion in one of the gem cutting groups on facebook that i belong to about measuring the performance of a gemstone from the bottom for me i keep things simple so i'm just looking at face up performance what i mean is what brilliance and sparkle would you see in the gemstone if you are looking down at the top of the gemstone in the light kind of holding the stone in your hand if you have a different criteria great there is no right or wrong answer and with gcs there's no shortage of options available to analyze the performance of gcs that's why they call it the tilt performance here's the design i'll be cutting along with the cutting instructions if i cut this design correctly i'll get about 65 percent brightness or sparkle face up more if i tilt the stone slightly either way and that's pretty awesome so now that i've selected a design i'll trim off a piece of rough from this half bowl and we can start fastening i previously made a video called all about dops so i won't show you how to dop the stone here here's the link okay for our beautiful piece of uh ruby we need to put it into our ultra tech and for this uh design what we want is at the 96 tooth the 96 tooth of our 96 uh index we want the stone to go in so that the long side either side is uh up or down so that's how we'll set it so once we set it in there just setting it by eye about like that and then we tighten the set screw and we'll be ready to start cutting our ruby okay for our ruby i'm going to use a topper a much more coarser topper because corundum is is very hard i'm not uh i used to be worried too much about uh causing internal structure damage uh when i used rougher uh laps to rough in my uh preform my stone but uh i think with corundum i'm gonna be okay so i've got a brand new topper topper is just a thin uh lap kind of you know not that well made but doesn't need to be at the uh at the rougher levels um you can get by with the topper so this is a a 100 uh grit topper now this one comes from kent supplies but you can get them anywhere um chinese manufacturers or etsy ebay amazon so i'm going to use the uh 100 grit topper on my chronium i do have a 60 grit lap that i bought when i first started so one of the cutters talked me into it it was a bad idea that lap is too rough it does cause internal damage i have damaged stones by using it damaged quartz and other gemstones so i don't use 60 grit i would not recommend 60 grit but for corundum i'm going to try this 100 grit there's no internal inclusions right now in this lab created ruby so if we end up with some internal issues later we'll know that the 100 grit was too rough for corundum but i think we'll be okay so to use the topper you have to put it on a master lap and i use my ceramic lap another bad idea of a lap to buy in my opinion but it makes a great uh master lap because it's the flattest lap i just put the topper on there and ready to cut at the 100 grit level okay so for our first use of our 100 grit topper i want to show you how aggressive this lap is and why i wouldn't use it for most gemstone rough other than corundum [Music] you can see how that really made quick work out of the corundum so it's a very aggressive lap and i'll continue to pre-form this ruby with the 100 grit uh topper okay our 100 grit diamond topper lap made quick work out of preforming this uh piece of uh dark red ruby corundum so now i'll move to a probably a 300 series topper and then the 600 and keep working on the pavilion of this uh ruby okay i've gone over the uh a ruby with 13 000 grit diamond on a bat lap to preform it now i have not done the three rows of corner facets the girdle and then these first two tiers up the side all the way around so that's the g3 the p8 and the p7 tiers because i wanted to get the lines of each step lined up now that they're lined up the way i want them now i will uh probably polish them and then come back and cut those corners but i could cut the corners now so i think i'll go ahead and polish these facets then i'll be done with them okay i finished polishing the pavilion bottom half of our corundum except i haven't done the corner cuts yet i saved those because i wanted to make sure all my lines this this line this line and this line all lined up all the way around and now i will cut uh my p7 which will make a little point it'll be on this tier it'll go up and make a little point like a triangle and just touch this top row and then i'll do the p8 which will line up with the p7 on both these sides to make a triangle going up again and then the g3 the girdle to make sure all those lines line up so other than that the pavilion is done so i'll go back and cut the four corners right now and i did polish this with fifty thousand grit diamond but not on a bat lap i had uh i have two zinc laps that i had uh resurfaced and john at gearless he'll resurface all your laps for you and so i had them resurfaced they were very very corroded and they were just sitting around in storage so i read at one one thread one web site that zinc zinc laps work really well with corundum so i wanted to give it a try so 50 000 grit diamond on a zinc lap worked great in polishing these up okay i finished polishing the bottom half pavilion of our ruby so now i'll transfer the stone in my transfer fixture and attach the dot to the other half of the stone so we can cut the crown of our gemstone okay i finished going over the top of our lab created ruby with a 12m lap which is about a 1500 grit and uh it's all pre-formed all ready to go now i'll use the uh 3000 grit diamond on a bat lap probably after that a 15 000 grit diamond and then i'll probably go to the 100 100k uh diamond on a bat lap the stones coming along it's looking very very nice color and um here's so you can recall this is the half bowl that we used to start with so the color is coming out quite nicely as we uh as we cut it so i guess you can't really tell the color by looking at the bowl it kind of depends on the final stone so i'll continue to cut our man-made ruby okay the way i season my uh 100 grit bat lap with uh with the hundred thousand uh grit diamond is i use the uh pandemonium from gearloose and i just start a slow rotation put a little bit on then i use the snake oil and i put two drops or three drops and i work it all in [Music] then i take a piece of paper towel and i wipe a lot of it off and i'm ready to go so i'm just going to run it at a probably a slower than normal pace probably 400 rpm just lower the armature until it just touches you can see the light will start slightly blinking got just a little bit of touching and gently go over it the stone about four five times and then i'll check it and when they when that should give me the polish i need and if not i'll go over it a little a little bit more but that's that's how i do my polishing with 100 000 grit diamond so it's uh this facet here that i've polished up with the 100 000 grit diamond there's no scratches left on it and now i'll work through the rest of the stone with the 100 000 grit diamond on about that okay i've finished polishing the upper half of the ruby have to set it up now to cut the table and polish the table and then we'll be done okay i finished polishing the table of our man-made ruby so i'll put in the acetone remove the stone from the top and then we'll weigh it and measure it and send it off to bulpie the standard oblong step cut with cut corners is a classic gem cutting design that has been used for ages it is appropriate for cutters of all skill levels and a brand new cutter could very well cut this design as their first gem cutting project personally i recommend to use a standard round brilliant as the first designed to cut but i do know gem cutting instructors who have their new cutter students cut a rectangular step shape as their first project again there's no right or wrong answer the final gemstone turned out great and it has a lot of sparkle hope he likes it i do believe i will cut a piece of my cranberry corundum bowl in the near future using this same design just so i can compare it and hope we can compare it and look at the colors of the two stones and see which one we prefer for a standard ruby lab created so stay tuned let me know what you think of this design and let me know what color of lab created ruby is your go-to color and as always happy fashioning everyone [Music] ba

Channel: BOPIE'S Diamonds & Fine Jewelry

Views: 19,094

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Id: tLDDsF0hWu4

Length: 20min 1sec (1201 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 21 2021