STEPS TO CUT GEMS AS BEGINNERS
Ornaments have always been a very precious thing close to a female’s heart. The idea to experiment with its designs and shapes and go with the recent trends has always been a matter of craze among people. When paired with elegant gemstones, many precious metals give a distinctive and unique look to the accessories you are making.
The jewelry we wear has a lot of manual labor behind it, starting from mining the metals and gemstones to the processing of them, then getting them manufactured for the marketplace. Therefore, getting a beautiful piece of jewelry involves a lot in making it.
THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND WHILE SHAPING A GEMSTONE:
Let’s shift our focus to what one needs to keep in mind while cutting a gemstone, especially for beginners. Firstly, one must keep in mind while cutting a gem that all gemstones are not the same in their textures or hardness. Some stones are quite delicate and need to be handled gently in cutting them, while others are hard.
To cut hard gemstones and give them the desired shape according to your choice, use a faceting machine. While picking up a form for the gem, choose one that will be more or less similar to the shape of the current stone. In this process, you will not end up wasting a lot of the precious stone and, at the same time, will succeed in giving it a beautiful shape to be paired with any metal to get a piece of beautiful jewelry finally.
On the other hand, if the gems are very soft, like that of pearl or amber, don’t use any harsh tools as they might break the stone. Instead, go for water or sandpaper to give them your desired shape.
The most commonly used gemstone is the diamond. For centuries, diamonds have always been used for making wedding or engagement rings, but with the advancement of time, there came up many other stones like moissanite, emerald, sapphire and many others. But despite these stones being on-trend, still diamond does not fail to deem its shine. De Beers, the diamond ring company, has significantly marked a stamp of popularity for the specialization of diamond minings.
A very skilful hand is required to get the best out of a gemstone. A lapidary who is very experienced and skilled will examine the stone in the first place to figure out the symmetry, balance, and shape of the stone. It is considered a vital step for the stone’s orientation as the cuts and designs add elegance to it, and, at the same time, the finished piece of the stone even adds an overall value.
When a cutter approaches a gemstone, it is more like a rough piece of stone which needs to go through a lot of processing to come up as a dazzling piece of jewelry. Gems which are lesser in value are always cut into standard sizes and kept uniform. The more complex the cuts will be in the gemstone, the more it will pop up with its brilliance and add more value to it. After examining a gem, the lapidary will then take the step to slice it, which involves cleaning the stone by grinding it down and then cutting any rough spots.
Before you give the final cut or shape to any gemstone piece, you first need to shape it roughly (which, in other words, can also be called pre-forming). In this process, the gem cutter will determine the cuts required for the stone and then roughly pre-shape it by hand using a grinding machine. Meanwhile, the small trick that one needs to keep in mind as a beginner is that do use water while grinding the stone, as water will help to speed up the grinding process, giving the stone more polished and finer cuts.
Have you ever thought about why a gemstone has so many complex cuts and designs, like why it is not always cut uniformly? The reason is simple to bring the best out of it in terms of its beauty and sparkle; the gemstones are cut so that it adds a symmetrically aligned face to the gem. This process is known as “faceting”. This is a very ancient method of cutting stones and even now is quite difficult to master it even with the usage of machines. It requires high skills and is a bit time-consuming to master. Each facet is cut separately with special skills as it requires the exact measurement of the crown and the pavilion of the gem. It is done using a faceting tool as it is certainly difficult to get it done with free hands. Ring Designs mostly involve such complex steps as it requires the fine cuts to sparkle. The lapidary uses a faceting tool to measure the stone’s angle, index, and height. Once this process is done, it solidifies the size and symmetrical shape of the stone.
The final step is polishing. Each facet is polished smoothly to produce its brilliance and sparkle. Diamonds and any other colored gemstone jewelry go through the same process as the more carefully the stone is polished, the more uniform smoothness it will show up. The dirt or the excessive residue also gets separated from it in this process.
CONCLUSION:
So this article was to educate beginners who want to learn the process of cutting different precious gemstones. So it was just a summarized way to make them understand its basics. Along with practice, you will achieve mastery.
