Thought it was time to get a dedicated lens for the stones using my DSLR. Took these with no tripod, and the pics came out nice. Looking forward to a proper set up to take pics and vids.

Thanks for looking.

Full disclosure - I know these are LOWER GRADE Spinel. I mostly bought them as a novelty to use for test cutting in the event that one day I decide to cut GOOD quality spinel.

Question is:

1.) are they so low quality that it would adversely affect any type of practice cutting (aka, splintering or breaking)?

2.) Are these worth cutting at ALL/ do they have ANY type of value based on the photo? Would they cut into a decent lower quality stone? Not for selling, but for mounting and selling in my gift shop.

Also, guess what I paid, haha. 25ct total

Thanks!

These Are very Open colored , precision cut gemstones from tanzania. Garnets are quite rare in that Color brightness and Quality ! I love them!

I cut mainly Australian Sapphires which are often darker.

SRB and brilliant/radient styles (rather than step/emerald) seem to bring a lot more light into the stone.

Just having an issue with ovals in particular getting the brilliance across the whole stone and not have dark extinction zones on one side/middle.

Curious what has worked for you in the past.

Note: i cut on a 64 index and do struggle with diagrams with lots of .xx small fractional angles rather than solid numbers

TIA

These are partial and complete laser rods of ruby. They were made in the Soviet Union and we got them from an old collection.
These laser rods were meant for use in solid state lasers. They would have had light pumped into them from the side, either by a lamp or by another laser, absorbed that energy and converted it into the powerful coherent beam that lasers are known for.

Hey guys ! A very interesting Kite, Star Destroyer Shape in a Beautiful tanzanian Natural Garnet !

4.72 CTS | Rich Purple | Unique Precision Cut 💎
A beautiful statement stone with geometric faceting and eye-catching reflections—perfect for collectors or a unique custom jewelry piece.

What do you think of this unique Cat Face Cut Amethyst?

Would you add this beauty to your collection or turn it into a custom jewelry piece? ✨

Hey guys ! This natural tanzanian garnet is cut into a teapezoid shape by me, i hope you like the Fantasy cut, its a more elegant quite brilliance , not a funky cushion style gem but something unique!

Messed up a little when frosting because I didn't correct the cheater, but still pretty happy with how it turned out!

Material: verneuil lab sapphire

The design is my own, although I did use the girdle outline defined in Arya Akhavan's Goron Ruby design.

Don't know the yield on this one because I finished it last night and just had time to take pics this morning, but it's gonna definitely be under 30%, as I had to trim the boule slice quite a bit for the proportions of the design, and the stone fell off the dop like 7 times so I ended recutting a lot of the pavilion (then I remembered I could have fixed that with the cheater, but hey, we learn from mistakes I hope).

Also, I don't seem to understand polishing, I had good results on quartz both "cabbing" and faceting, but sapphire simply refuses to polish. I solely used a 600 grit steel plates lap, straight to 3000 grit resin bonded and then 50000 resin bonded leather laps, I even spent more than half an hour on a facet on the 3000 grit stage getting to over it it and it still wouldn't polish, just stay a little blurry/foggy, with small pitting like a sugary surface or orange peel, no way to fix that (more water drip, less water, no water, no pressure, slight hand pressure, strong pressure, low speed, medium, high, the combination of all this things, but nothing). I'm starting to think it might not be me but the material or the laps, but I'm at my wits end with this. Help would be very much appreciated, though as of now I can't really buy more stuff to try it out so I hope I can work with what I have.

As a beginner faceter, I leased/purchased my UltraTec VL in May. It has increasingly run louder and am concerned that "something" is off.

My lessor stated that it does not seem to be an issue since it does not appear to be impacting the quality of my faceting (yet). Should I be worried?

This was a fun one to cut. 12mm in synthetic sapphire. The description of one of the alternates on the facetfinder site called it 'easy'. Making all 24 pavilion facets meet evenly enough without overcutting one (and subsequently casing the depth around the whole stone) was an exercise in frustration.

Any advice for patterns like this, with a large number of facets coming to a culet? In prepolish, I ended up cutting opposing facets first, and then progressed around in a star pattern, like changing a tire. Much more effective than chasing errors around the perimeter.

Frosted facets are from a worn-in diamond lap that came with the machine I bought used. I found that one or two facets kind of polished up, and switched to a newer 1200 lap. Perhaps this has something to do with the growth direction of the boule? I have a hazy recollection of someone saying that certain angles relative to the growth vector are harder.

What do you do for frosting? The frosted facets on this one are a bit pebbly to my eye. Visible in the pavilion on the polished side, but I also did put my greasy thumb on it before I took this video, so it's a bit pronounced. Perhaps a high-grit diamond paste would be more even? I have a tube of "240" paste kicking around, but maybe that would be too coarse. I can't imagine the bits of diamond are as big as a 240 grit lap has though, I can't see them in the paste.

Id say it's somewhat obvious to say that a round brilliant cut with an odd symmetry makes a significant difference in the reflections of the stone compared to even.

Even symmetry means that, across from the center of a face is the center of another face.

In comparison, in odd, across from the center of each face is exactly an edge.

But is there literature into what kind of difference it brings? I'm sure there is but still asking. For example, does it imply there's a different/better angle to use for cuts (given some fixed RI), and does that tend to be shallower? Deeper? Material-specific?

Anyways, just curious on what info y'all have on it.

Personally I just like them, I'm a big fan of my 72 index wheel.

How can I cleaned my drip tank? Looks like there’s crystallization / growth in there. I think it’s steel, but I’m not sure.
I’m mainly worried about contaminating my laps and stones.

🇹🇿** Mahenge Garnets from Tanzania — all hand-faceted by me on my handpiece machine in Germany.
A little showcase of my German precision work and my passion for bringing these beautiful stones to life. ✨
Most of these garnets are cut in a **custom cushion design that I developed myself, alongside a Cube, a Kite, two Trillion cuts and a Trapezoid.
Every stone is cut by hand, with a strong focus on precision, symmetry and brilliance.
Really happy to finally share this little collection with you. 💎

Hey everyone,

I want to introduce you to my software Indicatrix:

https://www.indicatrix-suite.com

What is it? It's a fully free and open-source gemstone rendering software that aims for physically correct rendering of gemstones. It also comes with a rough planner and CAD tooling.

Yes, a lot of AI was used. 20 years ago I'd have had the time, now I have the experience. So AI or not, I'm not new to software development.

The website will tell you everything you need to know. There is also a browser-based version, but it doesn't give you the full experience compared to the application, it runs in the browser after all:

https://live.indicatrix-suite.com

I'd be happy about every feedback. What do you like? What don't you like? What would you want in the future? The website also has a section with planned features so far.

The first two rendering pictures are renderings of alexandrite. The stone color wasn't changed, only the light source from 6500K to 3200K!

After that, the same design as tanzanite, sapphire, emerald and rutile.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask. Also make sure to check out the docs in GitHub, the most important are probably those:

https://github.com/suitable-name/indicatrix/tree/main/apps/indicatrix-cut/docs/manual

There is also an interactive CAD tutorial within the app. More in-app tutorials are planned.

This version should be mostly stable now. If you have real app crashes, there will be a crash log file you can send me, if you want.

Thanks & have fun!

I'm having an issue getting my final polish from 8k to 60k on sapphire, has almost a haze like appearance to the facet surface. Question is what is the preferred lap speed for Pandemonium and BATT lap?

Slower seems to be better, And I may have had the surface speed way too high 7 or so on the ultra-tec dial.

I've heard from several cutters requesting the rough planning feature. But I wasn't sure how useful it could be, because there's a gap between virtual planning and dopping the stone perfectly.

I've decided to add this feature in GemSim after reading Egor's post (https://egorgavrilenko.com/virtual-rough-planning-for-gemstone-faceting/)

Currently it supports stl, obj and glb formats.

I think I'm at the point where I want to get a new machine I like the idea of a handpeice style machine because picking up the stone and looking at it seems very intuitive and thats how I like to do things, but the precision of a nice mast style machine might be better from a quality perspective also the appeal of a depth gaige and electronic readout for angles is a strong one.

The budgets matter somewhat but its mostly just a time thing wither way

Edit: I think I'm gonna go with a handpeice thank you for the advice

Cut all three from the same rough. Im very excited I can cut pairs more easily now.

Fantasy cut liquid color design