I have checked many faceting videos as I tried to learn the art....and honestly....This guy over here is the most detailed and insightful......it is thru his videos that i have been able to cut my first gem....He gives ALLL The details....the other videos dont guide well....they are so shallow...Thank you sir and God bless you.
Really cool series. Thanks for sharing. I had never realized just how much skill and work goes into faceting. I guess Im gonna need more than my bench grinder and dremel tool for this
Visited a gem mine and mined some stones and had them made for a memory. It was a beautiful experience and was very excited to see the finished product. I'm amazed at this craft. Wonderful and awesome. Thank you for these excellent demos.
MoreGems.com do you ever make a mistake and end up severely injuring your hand with those blades? Your hand is really close to them when you’re sanding the stone
Loved the video, two stones which are a couple of my absolute favorites. But that grinding... 😖... like nails on a chalkboard. I still gave it a thumbs up.
What a safe door! Kid=candy store. Your imagination must be consistently stimulated if you have so many stones to choose from! Thank you for those of us who may be lucky enough to get one of your pieces of work.
It is great! Always something new! We actually have 3 websites you can purchase our gems from if you're interested... www.MoreGems.com (various loose colored gems), as well as our tanzanite website www.TanzaniteJewelryDesigns.com, and finally our opal website www.OpalLust.com .
I always find it soo difficult to preform the area where I put the dop on the table. Like I have a pretty small stick of tourmaline and it's always ends up slightly slanted. Are there tools for this or is it just practice?
Attempting to facet a teapazoid shape 2.00 m x 3.08m x 1.25m dot is 1.10m you help me realize my glue may of went over the edge of the stone but what have you found to be the best epoxy for doting
I use 5 minute epoxy and will heat the metal dop to 200+ degrees and the epoxy melts, thus making the removal easy. I know some stones cannot be heated, but you are only going to heat the dop which will come off before the stone heats up. I do wait overnight as the 5 minutes is only setup time and it doesn't harden fully for 4 hours or better. Temperature makes a difference with the epoxy. The lower the slower.
Do gem cutters ever specialize in one ( or few ) stone? Or, can a gem cutter cut any stone? Do you ever facet diamonds? Or is that a specialized gem cutter?
Some do specialize but most cutters do a variety as the process is very similar for most gems with the exception of diamond due to its hardness. Diamond requires specialized equipment
hi, I been looking for refractol... I only found some on etsy and they won't ship to canada (I'm waiting for an answer about that) in the meantime i'd like to know where I can buy or If I can make some on my own. by the way, thank you for making all these videos, they're a big help. i'm a newbie to stone cutting (been cutting opals) I made some cool looking pieces but with your techniques I bet i'll be making much better quality stones, faster too. so thanks a lot. :)
Hey Jonathan! Thanks for watching! We've just started using wintergreen essential oil, which allows us to see into many stones. Refractol does seem more difficult to get, and may be a bit hazardous if used improperly. This essential oil basically makes a foggy surface clear. The closer the refractive index of the oil is to the stone, the easier it is to see into it. You can get it on amazon, the one we bought was by Majestic Pure comeceuticals. Hope this helps!
Excellent instruction...but next time, if there is a next time, use a lavalier microphone. The "fingernails on the blackboard" screeching of the lap grinding makes my hair stand on end, and often overpowers what you are saying, teaching. A lav mike would solve both problems....
+MoreGems.com I was so intrigued by the process and really enjoying your thorough instruction that I completely tuned out the “nails on the chalkboard “ lol. Gemology was my least favorite subject in school, but maybe that’s because I didn’t have a teacher like Steve. Your love for this work is contagious and shines through. Thank you so much for generously sharing. I’m learning so much 😊😊
When that 'nails on a chalkboard' sound was going on the first grinding, my teeth literally started to hurt and my mouth started to water! like my ears told my brain I was at the dentist! Needless to say, I'm REAlly sensitive to some sounds.
+matt kermani Thanks for watching! You can try gravescompany.com - You may be able to get it direct through them, or they'll send it to a distributor near you.
It's highly variable, it just depends on what step you're on during the cutting/polishing process (the lap you are using), the material you are cutting, and how much material your trying to cut off, and the speed of the lap.
How do I get involved in the gem cutting profession? I'm currently working in a pharmaceutical environment (legal please let's not go there) where my attention to detail is perhaps mis-employed, or not valued. (I'm the as$@*le who retains 4 points from nought) I think this kind of chemistry might be more "my thing"; yet I don't want to redo a masters.
Buy a cutting machine and start cutting! You can look to see if you have any local lapidary groups near you. They may be able to help you get started. Steve started out as a wholesale gem dealer, then started his own retail store where we now cut the gems, design the jewelry, and manufacture it all in house.
I do think it would be advantages to viewers, if you check the writen sub text with the words being spoken. Schist, Dop, other misses are important to the Faceters. I had to stop Faceting because what I was reading, because of the distraction of my Faceting Machine, I read while I Faceting. The written just doesn’t make sense with all of those made-up words. This is important information for us to know.
Deborah Duthie - I need to go through and edit these one day. These are auto generated by RU-vid and they don’t get it quite right. I will work on that one of these days. The newer videos with better audio do have a bit more accurate subs. Until then I would disable them and try to listen to just the audio.