Faceting

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Community for discussing faceting and gemstones.

If you are a cutter, show off your work, provide tips and tricks or ask for advice.

If you don’t cut stones, feel free to ask questions!

No selling of stones, rough or anything else. You can however post links to vendors that you recommend.

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Whoops! This poor fire opal was victim to my (numerous) mistakes (pxlmo.com)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Fire opal, 0.335 carats, Princess Trilliant by A. Collins

This tiny beauty has quite a few mistakes in it, if you look past the pretty sparkles.

As soon as I started cutting the crown, the thing flew off my dop and clear across the room! The landing caused some minor chips on the pavilion, one of which is extremely obvious in the video.

I did my best trying to realign the thing but it took several attempts, and even with my best effort it was not quite right. My girdle is not level, and several of my meet points don't actually meet.

I wanted to share this one so any other newbs or aspiring faceters don't feel intimidated by all of our beautiful cuts - we make mistakes too! Sometimes many of them all at once, and we spend hours coming up with as many curse words as we can think of while we're trying to fix them! But even this dumpster fire turned out rather pretty, all things considered. :)

And when I say this thing is tiny, I really mean it. American penny for scale: tiny orange triangle about three times the height of a penny

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Is this something you would still sell or is it just to low quality for you to do that?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I would definitely not sell this one. Between the tiny size and the terrible cut, it's not even worth a few dollars. I cut for fun though, I'm really not good enough to sell since I just began faceting a few months ago, so I'm not upset at its worthlessness. My goal was to learn what cutting fire opal was like and I certainly did learn a lot with this one!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

From someone who knows Jack shit about gems or anything, I'm sure you could sell this with several other gems to someone who would be happy with them.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I'm afraid I couldn't, not without sacrificing my ethics at least. Gemstones are valued based on the material itself, the weight, and the quality of the cut. If I were to sell this as a quality stone I would honestly be lying, and the buyer would be left with something that has no actual value and would get them laughed at in every jewelry shop for trying to appraise a damaged, poorly cut stone.

I know it looks pretty to a layperson, but objectively there's no value to it. Unfortunately, many sellers take advantage of a layperson's inability to tell the difference between a good and bad cut and will lie to you about quality to inflate their price - it's really important you buy from reputable jewelers who only sell genuine good stones, or bring someone who knows a thing or two about gemstones, to try to prevent being scammed like this. GIA certifications can help with making sure you are getting a correctly valued stone as well.

You'd be horrified at the prevalence of bad stones on the market taking advantage of people who don't know better.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

If the deal seems too good to be true for a stone, it likely is. There are many many many tricks used to hide quality issues such as:

setting stone with a metalic backing - can provide better light return and make it harder to tell if the stone is windowed
filed rubies
oiled emeralds

I have sold stones to friends and co-workers and always price them lower than market as I am not a professional. I will also refund them if they take it to a gemologist who disagrees with my price. But as the poster has indicated the stone that was cut had numerous flaws in the cutting process and is pretty but not worth much.

Still great to look at!!!!!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

I have several stones with wandering girdles - this still looks great regardless!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I honestly hate cutting small stones… they are so easy to screw up royally.

Still looks good!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

I hate them for the same reason, but I also love them because they cut so fast! Patience is a virtue I do not have in abundance, but I'm definitely learning to have more of it with this hobby.