As a reminder here is the diagram of the cut being done.
We left off last time with a mistake that needed to be corrected. I over cut the final tier on the first facet. So I decided to switch to my pre-polish lap the 3000 grit, and pre-polish the girdle.
Then I recut the tiers using the pre-polish 3000 lap.
2nd Tier:
3rd Tier:
4th and 5th Tiers:
For polish I use a tin lap that has had 60k diamond paste applied. I run this at a low speed and use a spray bottle instead of the drip tank for lubrication.
Polishing goes very fast, only a few swipes across the lap and a facet is done. Here are the 2nd and 3rd tiers polished.
Finally the pavilion is polished. My apologies for the blurry picture but my phone just can’t seem to focus on the polished surface all that well up close.
Now that the pavilion is complete, I need to transfer the stone to another dop in order to cut the other half. I do this with the transfer jig. I place the current dop in making sure that the angled piece if firmly against the slide. This is allows both dops to be aligned at the index level.
At this point I’ll carefully push the new dop up against the stone. Notice that the new dop has a concave surface to better hold the pavilion. Then I’ll glue the stone to the new dop and let that set.
Next time I’ll start on the crown of the stone.
I’m sorry for asking so many questions, I hope you don’t mind! My faceting class is tomorrow and I’m going to be quizzing the teacher mercilessly I promise.
Glue vs wax vs epoxy - everyone seems to have their preferred adhesive (and it seems like wax is the least popular lol). What made you prefer glue over the other options? Do you ever switch it up depending on the material or cut you’re working with?
I don’t mind the questions at all!
I used to use wax exclusively, as it allowed for readjustment on the dop during initial placement as often as desired. The downside of wax is it can be brittle, and requires the stone and dop to be heated with a flame in order to properly adhere. Additionally, due to the brittleness it has a tendency to break and pop the stone off the dop, which requires reattachment and recutting causing waste. I’ll still use wax for smaller stones that are softer and require a light touch to cut.
I’ve moved more towards super glue style adhesives as there are more precise ways to align a stone to a dop for the initial cuts. See guiu dopper. It also holds really well with the downside of total time to full cure is multiple hours. You can speed up the cure with baking soda. If you don’t allow for a full cure there is a chance that the stone my pop loose.
I haven’t tried epoxy yet, so can’t really comment there.
