How to Cut & Polish Gemstones: Introductory Lesson

Hi I'm Steve Moriarty I've been a gem cutter for thirty years and in this series of videos we're going to attempt to either enhance your ability to cut if you're already a gem cutter or to teach you how to cut your first gemstone and become a high quality gem cutter so in front of me is everything that you will need to do your fasting there's a few extra things that you could do without but generally these are the things you're going to need to to be a quality fastener or if you want to be in the business you'll need to have all this material to to do your faceting it all starts with the faceting machine many of the machines that I currently have are no longer manufactured including this one the Imperial alpha Taurus facet is no longer made which is a great machine it may be remade by another company in the near future so two machines that I've used that I would recommend are the facet Ron and Ultratech are two great machines Ultratech has the advantage that they do have an attachment for the ultra tech that will you can also do concave faceting so from there let's go into some of the equipment and starting with Dobby so this is the equipment you'll need to DAP your stone I personally use epoxy some people use waxes but I find epoxies is better for me I use a millimeter gauge to help Center the stone and these are your top stick so you need an assortment of different sized ops and v-dubs cone Dobbs and flat tops okay the other glue I use is super glue and this is when you run into a problem with a stone breaking loose from the top a super glue is a quick fix you know this is a transfer block it's it's required for both setting up the stone on the initial top and when you transfer it from the pavilion to the crown of the stone so I use refract all to see inside the stones this is a die Chris cope used to identify stones and tell which direction to cut toothpicks I use to mix the epoxy and I use post-it notes just because they're a convenient throw away I take notes of the design I create on post-it notes so this is the diamond powder I use and it's a 0.5 micron or 50000 mesh next is a form of magnification my preferred is the optivisor they also have these as glasses if you don't want to mess up your hair but the optivisor is probably the easiest to use I use number 5 on both of these gives me the right distance and right magnification these are used when you cut then you'll need a loop to use for the Polish because you have to see much closer when you polish so you'll need a few tools to adjust your machine depending on machine allen wrenches and a channel lock to loosen up them not when it gets too tight tweezers always comes in handy in the end you're going to want to weigh your stone so you'll need some kind of scale and preferably something that goes to a hundredth of a carat stone papers to wrap up your stone when you're finished or stone boxes or plastic baggies or things we use now for faceting designs of course you can create your own designs but these books are just great books and many many people use them Glenn and Martha Vargas have a series of about 4 books that are available that will give you all sorts of fascinating designs cut them I prefer this method because it still has a little input for you and you can be creative if you're not creative the lead point faceting will take you step by step from passive capacitive cut and it is a very useful book also teaching for teaching you how to cut their digits it's probably the best for a starter but both these books are important to have so the cutting laps that I use these are metal plates with with diamond and I have here three different grits starting at about 120 this is prior to 20 and this would be maybe a 600 and these because they're thin they do require that you have some kind of master lap this is just an old lap that I've used as a master gland and you can buy a master lap it just needs to be a flat true running lap that these go on top of from here I tried when I can to go directly to a 325 ray tech this is a new Bond lap the the new bond has changed quite a bit they have reformulated it and it's holding up very well for me now I always go from 325 to polish except when it's maybe a really hard stone you can use this 600 which is another new Bond lap both these work very well and then polished very smoothly and for most stones I can go from 325 to the bad lab which is a tin composite lap that's very hard and cuts very flat and with this I use 50,000 diamond so ideally you go from freeform to 325 to the 50,000 diamonds is the shortest way to cut a stone now other than the bat lab the other thing I use are the cerium oxide spectral apps they're good for quartz and opals whereas a bad lap is not very good for either so you're going to need some chemicals acetone is used for removing glues from the dots denatured alcohol is a general cleanup material and it's also used in the alcohol lamp which you'll need to remove the epoxy from your stones this is used when you're transferring but this is used when you're finished attack will dissolve epoxies so you just have a jar full of the acetone with something soft on the bottom so you don't chip the stones and you put them in there and overnight the the top your finish stone will be available to you there are two zeros to get them out of there and ease of chemicals not the best to breathe or handle wd-40 is required for the bat lap the tissue is required to put the bat lap and clean off the bat lab this is belt conditioner every twenty thirty stones you'll need to put some conditioner on the belt of the machine so it keeps running smoothly now this is what I clean my dobson using the acetone alcohols general cleanup for your gemstone when you're finished and of course you'll need a nice cotton cloth to clean the stone while you're polishing and I think that's pretty much it the other than this little tool which we use a non surgical blade in it it's a lightweight blade that I use to cut the epoxy from the gemstone when I'm transferring it and you'll see more about this later so the last times I have are these boxes which you'll store your laps in and particularly the polishing laps because you don't want to get them contaminated this is a jar with cerium oxide and we use cerium oxide on these Specter laps and I put it on with the q-tips and of course you'll need some matches to light your flame so this is pretty much everything you're going to need over the next several videos we're going to show you how to use this equipment and we hope you'll be well on your way to becoming a master gem cutter

Channel: MoreGems.com

Views: 397,267

Keywords: Gemstones, Gem cutting, Cutting, Faceting, Faceter, Lapidary, How to, Learn, Faceted, gemstone faceting, how to cut gemstones, how to polish gemstones, how to cut stones, how to polish stones, yt:cc=on

Id: w6FEaxgSNgg

Length: 9min 11sec (551 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 15 2016