1. Start out with garnet for practicing. It's cheap and usually quite forgiving, makes a nice stone to!
2. Patience, Patience and patience is key to making a good stone!
3. You are best equipped with 3-4 laps; 360 for roughly shaping the stone, 600 for general cutting and a prepolish and polishing lap.
4. Start easy! Don't get into difficult-to-cut shapes and designs for starters.*
5. If you have questions, ask! Faceting is a lot about "learning by doing".
6. To save some frustration, get superglue to glue the stones to the dopstick. Just beware of heat sensitive stones, like calcite, opal and a few others.
7. if you do not have a faceting machine - get the best you can afford!
Beautiful cut and material. I think I have to take a trip to the Pala mine instead of the Himalaya because the Pala does have Kunzite.
I would love to cut, but it's too expensive for the machine.... that is....unless I sell my metal detector, my walking liberties and some other junk.... hmmm.
Lee, the price is reflected from the size (well, weight) and as a side note there is no real shortage of kunzite. The stone is loupe clean and the cut is good.
If it had been a 46 cts stone the price would be a whole different ballpark.
Very nice looking work, however regarding your tips to G O EYE, number 2 pretty well eliminated me. I'm short on patience but like looking for them and letting others make them look pretty like you do.
Thank you Buck, I enjoy looking for them to, but gems are rare in Sweden.
Cutting is largely a mental aspect aside from the practical parts, I had to learn to be patient myself.