This stone was cut by my son using his own design. YAG is a man made crystal used in lasers. Most YAG that cutters get comes from rejected crystal that didn't meet specs.
None of these pictures do it justice as it had almost as much fire as my wife's engagement ring.
And this surprises anyone?
I’ve used dental wax for years to hold the stones to the dop and it does a good job as long as you don’t use too much force when cutting. The key to using the wax is to make sure you heat both the stone and dop enough for the wax to adhere. You can tell that has done so when the wax edge no longer seems to curl under and instead seems to have a clean line with the surface.
I’ve used super glue as well depending on the situation… but the cure time and difficulty in getting it off the dop and cleaning the stone of the residue makes it not worth it in my opinion.
This is interesting... I would not have considered using some of the tools of the trade for the purposes you have outlined.
You can see and read about some of the equipment I use in this post. I did a whole series of posts around how I cut stones.
In terms of equipment, there is a pinned post in this community that has some links as well.
Happy to answer any questions you might have.
Nope, this stone and its siblings were given to me to cut.
Been super busy with life, but finally got back to cutting. This is the second of four chrome diopside stones I'm cutting.
Amazing and intense. One of the best I’ve ever witnessed.
Second this
Non-cloud cams with an nvr all the way. I won’t touch the cloud based services. My go to is currently Reolink.
You did an absolutely stunning job on this one!!!
Now you are motivating me to finally try my hand at frosting a cut.
Love that color...nice work!
Thanks! I updated the thread post with your links.
The vendor I mostly use is Joe Henley Rough.
I met Joe at the Tucson Gem and Mineral show a few years ago, and found him both personable and honest. I have never had an issue with any purchase from him. He sells both natural and some synthetics.
You can link to vendors... no issue... I just don't want to have active solicitation for selling stones, as that adds significant overhead for validating the seller. I've updated the sidebar to reflect this. 😀
Also, please post the link to the vendor, as I'm looking for a good source for synthetics.
Unfortunately this stone has a fracture and inclusion right at the cutlet.
Nothing I could do, so decided to finish the stone and hope it held together. Here is another view of the pavilion.
I like the color, too bad the light return wasn’t what I was looking for.
This is one of the most perfect cuts I've managed. The meet points are all as perfect as I could get, as well as the polish. I chose a more standard round cut than what my son designed as I wanted to lighten the stone more due to the overall color saturation of the material.
I'm going to cut a second calibrated to match, and get them set for my wife.
My son has really started to get into faceting. He bought a boule of hydrothermal emerald(man made) as he wanted to cut a design he made specific to emerald.
He sliced the emerald in half and gave me one half while he cut his up into the sizes he was going to facet.
I was mostly hands off with this and only really helped out when his stone popped off the dop. He did a great job!
This is one of two stones I’m cutting from a piece of morganite. This stone was started almost a month ago, and sat on the dop for weeks after I cut part of the crown and found an inclusion of bubbles that intersected a set of facets on one side looking like a fracture.
The perfectionist in me was pissed and frustrated and I walked away from the stone leaving it on the machine. I was forced to finish the stone thanks to my son who was planning on cutting a hydrothermal emerald. So I finished the stone, and you can’t even see the flaw without a loop.
I’m such an idiot and am so thankful that my son gave me a swift kick in the ass.
So my son, who is studying engineering, has gotten into faceting due to the math/science behind optimizing a cut. He designed this in GemCad Studio, and cut this stone this last weekend. Turned out incredible, and I wanted to share.
Rumor has it, the monorail will be dismantled in the next couple of years due to not being able to get parts.