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More faceting questions from the Mail Bag:
I have been looking at the Graves Mark I and noticed you use a Facetron. What is your opinion of the right machine for a newbie that will allow me to use gemcad and cut precisely? I don't want to spend a fortune so any advice would be appreciated. Catherine
Hi, Catherine,
Thanks for writing.
This is one of the most common questions that I get – which faceting machine to buy. And, nearly everyone says they “don’t want to spend a fortune”.
It’s difficult to know what “a fortune” may seem like to someone else. When I started out, almost any amount of money was “a fortune” to me. However, one thing I can’t stand is trying to learn or be productive working with crappy tools.
It’s important to realize the value of three things:
It’s a bit silly to go half-way on equipment if that causes a huge dent in the learning curve. When you could be cutting – and potentially making money doing it – but are still tearing hair and fighting with bad equipment, that’s not really a good strategy. Likewise fighting with bad equipment – that tends to create bad habits. Then, you get into really inefficient ways of doing things, and productivity is hampered for the long-term. And, if you don’t enjoy the process, what’s the point? Faceting is challenging enough to learn without compounding the inevitable frustrations.
By this point, you can probably predict what I’m going to say?
I recommend machines from any of the big manufacturers that are in business and have been for some time, producing high-precision machines. I do not recommend any machine that isn’t in that category, especially if you want to work with GemCAS and do modern high-tech designs (where you need accuracy to 1/10 of a degree).
While it’s possible to cut on a Graves – and do great production of simple designs, I would not find cutting modern Barion ovals, for instance, a fun experience on such a machine – not even with years of experience.
So, I recommend Facetron, or Ultra Tec primarily (not just because I sell them). They’ve been around forever, and the guys who make them are fanatical about their engineering – and about having their customers taken care of. I know them both personally, and I’ve been to both manufacturing facilities. They really stand behind their work. And, in my years of helping people get started they’ve both gone the extra mile to help my students who had problems.
I’ve got stories about the Jarvi guys turning things around overnight and shipping parts, and stories about Joe Rubin taking my calls on a Sunday to talk me through a repair of one of his machines that went down during a class. I like working with people who are actually into what they do…
I also do not recommend used machines because you never know how one may have been abused or neglected. And, a beginner hasn’t the skills necessary to trouble-shoot. If you find a used machine, contact the manufacturer and ask them about doing a refurb / update / calibration for you. They are usually very reasonable, and you’ll be certain to have a tight machine to work with. If you are in the market for a used machine, join the nearest Faceter’s Guild or group and keep an sharp eye on their newsletter.
You can regularly find used equipment in FACETS – the newsletter of the Columbia Willamette Faceter’s Guild. Just remember to do that refurb thing.
When I started, despite being broke, I bought a new machine on advice very much like what I’ve written above. I now give that same advice, and in hindsight I’m grateful that I didn’t compound my newness with sub-standard machinery or worries about whether the machine was sound.
I hope this helps. Please write if you have other questions.
More faceting questions from the Mail Bag:
Like your siteSomeone asked you about pricing and you did the usual dance around it, as you should! But please post something about earnings, since no one mentions what part-times or full-times are making yearly doing this. I wish to go into this full-time, but can consider the investment until I have some idea of return on that investment, (especially the time involved in learning, etc.). The easiest way, I think, to do this, is to give examples of others who don't mind sharing their first or second year earnings for faceting. Thanks, Jim
Hi, Jim.
Thanks for writing and glad you like the site!
I hope that I never “dance around” anything – I do my best to give clear and complete answers. The challenge about pricing is that it is subjective – and depends on the venue – the timing, etc. Prices can be very flexible in the gem industry. That’s not a “dance” – it’s just how things are.
Asking for a specific pricing formula is like asking for a specific formula for surfing. There are waves and then there are WAVES – and those things are as variable as location – and weather – which depends partly on season. Pricing is just like that.
As far as “typical earnings” – you’re asking for information that does not exist. There is no “typical”. And, what is possible this year for one person may not be possible next year even for the same person.
Out here in the surf the reality of existence is not the same as that on dry land. There simply is no “typical” or “expected”. This is professional art – and becoming a professional artist is … a bit on the wild side to begin with.
There are retirees who are doing work for what probably tallies to $15 an hour, and there are guys who are well over $100 / hour. Keep in mind that’s for the hands-on-the-gem time, not for every hour they’re doing business-related stuff.
If a person wants to make money faceting, that can be done rather easily, in my opinion. It’s a rare skill to do it well, and a rare person who will commit and invest the time and money necessary to doing it.
However, a person who is concerned primarily with guarantees and security may not want to become a professional artist. This kind of thing fits best for someone who is motivated primarily by their passion to create; to express; and to connect. The emotional state necessary for engaging that sort of thing is very different from the emotional state of counting the coins that may come – or go.
Even if someone would show you their books, while that could *possibly* shift your emotions about it – that would have no bearing on the reality of what you can – or will – personally create from your own efforts in your own environment – and the business climate you’re in THEN.
Income from a professional art endeavor depends on way more than artistic aptitude, although that’s the foundation whether someone wants to make money painting or make money faceting. There’s also productivity; marketing; communications; etc. – everything necessary to make a business run. And, there’s just no “typical” or expected measure of what any given person will likely produce – especially as a beginner.
What I can say is that if you’re the kind of person who passionately wants to express and connect – who likes standing on a surfboard, and who doesn’t mind falling into the drink sometimes, faceting can be a really great way to make some or all of your income – while you’re expressing and connecting.
Hope this helps!
More faceting questions from the Mail Bag:
Recently I have had some interest from a local jeweler in purchasing some of my faceting work. To date I have only sold a few stones to friends/family and I was using the pricing guides which were available on Jeff Graham's website for pricing. Do you mind if I ask how you price your stones? And do you use a discounted (wholesale) price when selling the same stone to a jeweler vs. a retail customer? I hope it is OK to ask your advice on this, and of course would greatly appreciate any guidance or help you would suggest. Thanks, D.
Hi, D.
Thanks for writing!
I’m glad to hear you’re getting around to selling stones past your friends and family. That’s a great step toward a more sustainable faceting practice – and toward much more exciting rough, too!
As far as Jeff’s pricing ideas, I don’t think I’d use that kind of source. It’s not an industry standard, and it’s not likely to be updated again.
You are very welcome to ask how I price. I use The Guide, published by Gemworld. Their publication costs some $205 per year (up from around $140 when I started my subscription). They use a variety of research to determine what’s happening in the actual market, and their publication is the de-facto professional appraiser’s standard – at least in America.
The publication also includes a number of articles about events and trends in the market that are affecting prices – like new finds or, new treatment or synthetic processes. If you want to be informed, this is one of those things you’ve got to have as part of the toolkit.
The trick with the Guide is that it’s in text format, so you’ve got to learn to do color grading. And, given that the human brain is notoriously bad at color memory, that can be a bit of a challenge. But, grading is just one of those things we need to be able to do if we’re going to be in the game. It’s a great excuse to go to Tucson and really look over the high-end goods to see just where you are. I also recommend looking in every jewelry store you pass – look at the color, GRADE IT, price it – and then go look at your guide and see what you think their markup is. Practice, practice, practice…
I have, for most of my cutting career had a keystone system in place, discounting to the jeweler and charging a closer-to-retail price to the retail customer. That difference has shrunk to the point I’m soon not going to be investing the time to maintain a two-tier pricing structure – though colleagues and jewelers will be able to enjoy a small discount from the quoted price. This will allow them to sell my goods and still make a percentage that will be more like a commission than a full mark-up.
The issue of pricing is VITAL to your enjoyment and satisfaction because it’s vital to your sustainability. What is more, it’s vital to your customer’s actual enjoyment of their custom jewelry pieces.
Pricing for the trade is very different from pricing for the retail customer. The psychology is very different – for them and for you. Be happy with what you charge – and DO NOT LET YOURSELF CARE how much they mark it up. People who let themselves be bothered by what the jeweler made on their stone are in for an unhappy time…
Price your goods so you make enough to get paid AND replace the rough to go around again. Then, you’re being sustainable, and everyone is going to be happy.
I hope this stuff is useful, and hope that you keep in touch. Thanks again for writing with the great faceting questions. When you have something else, just ask!!
I’m happy to announce that the UKFCG (United Kingdom Facet Cutters’ Guild) has an official US presence now (Me).
For some time, I’ve been telling American Faceters that the UK Guild offers a very top-quality newsletter, as well as some historical and training materials that are of very good value. Flattery has apparently earned me an honorary title as well as giving me the honor of hosting some of their quality content for FREE.
I’ve just uploaded five representative articles to the new UKFCG page that we’re hosting for them, so please check out the content, and then become a member so you get the full magazine. I also recommend the training manual and the back issues of StoneChat as well. A great library for any level Faceter, for a very reasonable investment. (I do NOT receive consideration for promoting these things – I just sincerely believe them to be good.)
I’m finally getting caught up after a very wild first half of year, which saw the passing of my best friend and business partner, Ken Newnham. Ken’s son, Chuck is now running the Juniper Ridge Fire Opal mine, and fee digs are still on. They are producing some very nice material up there this year, and I recommend you go there if you can.
Lots of interesting and great things coming down very soon. I’m about to schedule an important conference call for members of the Mentoring group – including some new business fast-track tools and techniques that offer AMAZINGly fast and easy sales opportunities and immediate cash flow for anyone who works it right – even if you don’t have a good inventory of stones yet.
More coming soon!
More faceting questions from the Mail Bag:
I have a quick couple of questions I hope you have time to answer for me. My bother-in-law brought back some Australian opal from his six month trip in Australia. Some of the opal is translucent and he wants me to try to facet some of it. I have never cut opal before and I warned him I had zero knowledge about opal. I know that opal is soft, Mohs hardness of 5-6.5 and heat sensitive so it should be cold dopped. I was planning on dopping the material with super glue to cut the pavilion and then transfer the stone using epoxy to cut the crown. I then wrap a cold wet paper towel around the stone and dop with epoxy glue to cut the crown and use a small torch to heat the dop attached with super glue and remove it. When the crown is done I put the stone in Attack and let it set over night to dissolve the epoxy. I could use super glue for both side of the stone and put the finish stone Acetone to dissolve the super glue or even use the same wet towel and torch process. Is there a better way to do this? I am concerned about the heat when I transfer the stone and the potential adverse impact the Attack or Acetone might have on the opal after I finish the stone. What are your thoughts. Do I cut the opal with 600 lap or do I use some other lap? Finally, what type of lap and polish do I use for the pre-polish and polish? As mentioned above, I have never cut opal before. By the way, I use two of your designs, the Hexa Brilliant #5 and Bare Square #3 OMNI version, to cut a couple pieces of Cristinite. They turned out great. Thanks for sharing! I take your designs and rebuild them in Gem Cad. I figure if I can't rebuild them, then I don't understand the design. I still have a lot to learn about Gem Cad. Even with all the information in front of me, I have trouble building many of the designs in Gem Gad. I will be a long learning curve me to learn Gem Cad. Again, thanks for all the help you have provide me. The BA5T's and diamond powder for corundum are fantastic. The made polishing sapphires a joy. The Corian laps with the Voodoo Magic work for just about everything else. I still have problems polishing quartz but I will figure it out one of these days. Cheers, Mike Hi, Mike
Thanks for the kind comments and the good feedback re BA5T laps. Make sure you let Jon Rolfe know you like them, too…
As far as polishing Quartz, *everyone* has the issue – Quartz can be a real frustration. Thankfully, there are some emerging strategies for that. I’m about to release Voodoo Chrome; I’m experimenting with a Voodoo Zirconium for Quartz; and Jon Rolfe also has a couple of new laps out that are likely to be better for Quartz than most of what’s available right now. He’s got a “green wing“, and “cream way“, and a hybrid “mint way”. I haven’t had a chance to test those YET. We did use Voodoo Chrome at the last academy and it *killed* on the Quartz we cut there. Availability on that is some few weeks out…
Your approach to using GemCad is really good: Getting the feel for a design in GemCad before you’re grinding on a stone is SMART. I use this strategy myself – even on my own designs, if it’s been a while since I’ve cut that one. Much better to be very clear what you’re doing and how the meets will come in than to over-cut due to confusion or mistake…
As for faceting Opal, I don’t recommend faceting unless it’s VERY clear. If the Opal is very cloudy AT ALL, it’s going to be a dead-looking piece, and probably a waste of time and material. This is SUCH an issue, I even have a special lighting technique I use for materials like Opal and Rose Quartz to evaluate their suitability for faceting.
So, if the Opal is translucent, I recommend against faceting. You’ll have better ROI by carving or cabbing.
As for dopping Opal, I’m a fan of minimizing both heat shock and chemical shock to the material. I usually put a blob of wax on the dop, and then use my tabling adapter to grind that flat. I superglue to that wax for initial dopping. After transfer you can release via mild warming or via a jeweler’s saw, or even a hot knife.
I’ll usually use epoxy in the cone dop – with a blob of some kind of no-stick on the culet to prevent shrink-breakage (vaseline or something like that). I will usually release the stone using a technique taught to me by Carl Unruh: I put the stone and dop in a double boiler and SLOWLY run the temperature from room-temp up to a rolling boil. I put the stone and dop in an orphan sock to prevent dropping or chipping. Working through the sock, I use a wooden utensil to push the stone off the dop. Then, leave the whole thing in the double boiler, turn the heat off and walk away until it comes back to room-temp on it’s own. This is a very cautious way of doing things. And, one must make SURE that the epoxy one is using will heat release around 200F. Loctite brand 5-minute epoxy is what I usually use. It also won’t respond well to Attack, but cleans pretty easily with Easy-Off oven cleaner (lye).
As for sequencing Opal, I don’t cut many smaller pieces because it won’t pay, so I’m usually cutting at 600, pre-polishing on a Red Raytech 600 NuBond, and polishing these days with my new Voodoo Chrome (which will be available very soon).
I hope this stuff is useful, and hope that you keep in touch. Thanks again for writing with the great faceting questions!
This just in from the mail bag:
Please advise the best sequence for cutting and polishing. Should one do all of the cutting, pre-polishing and polishing on each facet row before moving on to the next row or polish in reverse order once the culet is pre-polished? An early reply would be appreciated as I am at the point where I can use either to finish a stone that I am currently working on. Thank you for maintaining your very helpful web site and providing such helpful content. Keeth Miller
Thanks for your nice comments!
Sequencing is one of the most common questions – and one of the more important things in terms of enjoyment and efficiency.
You wouldn’t want to complete the cutting, pre-polishing, and polishing on each row – and then do all those steps on the subsequent row(s). This would have the edges of your nice polished facets getting gouged by the roughness of the cutting lap. This effect will be exacerbated by the way polished surfaces tend to demonstrate a greater hardness and a tendency to stick together, or “scale”.
You’d also be doing lots of lap changing…
Best to do all of each step on the stone and then shift to the next step.
The exception to this is when using a double-charged lap – both pre-polish and polish on one lap. Then, you do the pre-polish step; clean the stone; and do the polish step without making any machine changes. This can be faster, but requires some additional handling skills and care.
I recommend getting proficient at doing all of each grit, one at a time, first.
I hope this helps!
This question came in from one of the Mentoring Program members this week:
Many of them (jewelers) dislike faceted girdles, because those hard sharp edges make setting the stone difficult, especially with Sunstone.
I think this is true, if the girdle is THICK and/or if the jeweler isn’t really that skilled.
My ideas on this are:
Hope this helps!
This is just in from the mail bag:
I can't thank you enough for recommending the 600 cutting lap and BA5T to pre-polish with 3,000 diamond powder and then to use the BA5T for the final polish with 50,000 mesh diamond powder for cutting corundum. I purchased the 2 BA5T's and the 600 cutting lap. I just finished cutting my first Montana sapphire using this system. What a joy to use the BA5T's. I polished the sapphire like it was butter. It cut my pre-polish and polishing time by at least a factor 4. It polish those nasty tiny pits right out of the stone in nothing flat. The only thing I have to watch out for is overheating when polishing and cutting back on the pressure applied especially with the small sapphires. Again, a big thank you! Your recommendation is a huge time saver and it makes cutting and polishing sapphires a joy rather than dreading the polishing time.
This guy is following my recommended sequencing for cutting and polishing Corundum. It’s great to see someone getting the FUN results that faceting should be providing. How many more stones will a person cut when they’re having FUN doing it? This kind of feedback is the reason I built this site. Thanks very much!
This just in from the e-mail bag:
I started to facet this piece of Sunstone yesterday and when I used the 600 lap this strange surface appeared on this particular facet and it wouldn’t polish away, any idea what or why? What amazed me was that it only happened on this one facet, the stone is approx, 10 x 14 mm.
You usually see this sort of thing on Sunstone at the pre-polish level if you’re really close to a cleavage plane. Often, a sensitive faceter will detect this potential while cutting because these facets will feel softer than the rest – will cut faster, and over-cut quickly. The solution to getting a polish on them is:
Usually, a combination of these things will let you get a good polish – though we must sometimes settle for an over-cut facet in the process.
I just received another e-mail from someone asking about re-cutting a native-cut stone. Someone apparently offered to re-cut the stone, and:
"it would likely only need the pavilion facets straightened out, and the the bulges removed from underneath ... so the stone wouldn't even lose a carat".
Most of the windowing fat-bellied stones we see, the pavilion is roughly a hemisphere. That’s the bulges [sic] someone is referring to removing without losing a carat. Modern brilliant-style pavilions with “straightened out” facets are roughly cones.
So, to evaluate the “straighten out and remove bulge without losing a carat” statement, let’s look at some 7th grade math:
The formula for volume of a hemisphere is: 2/3 * pi * r^3
The formula for volume of a cone is: 1/3 * pi * r^2 * h
The volume of the cone will be ONE HALF the volume of the hemisphere, provided there’s sufficient depth to support proper angles without reducing the gem’s width – a luxury we usually don’t have. So, the yield is often less than 50% – a fact many customers find shocking.
Given that many native-cut stones are grossly lopsided, as well as too shallow to support their existing width with proper angles, a great deal more than 50% would be lost re-cutting many of them. Here’s a roughly profile-angle photo of the Sapphire re-cutting job you’ll find further down in the blog:
This stone was originally 3.5 mm deep, and we re-cut it to 3.2 mm deep, centering on the deepest portion, and losing only 0.3 mm in the process. The finished gem looks like this in profile:
To see the before and after of face-up appearance, have a look at this post.
Many faceters don’t keep a book on their actual yields, and wind up quoting insanely hopeful stories to potential customers. I recommend keeping a careful record of what you cut, and how you yield. Staying in touch with reality – and helping to improve performance are both very useful in my opinion.
