Of course, I didn’t get nearly as many stones cut in the past year as I had hoped. Life is like that. But I did make progress including some items that had been waiting for years. The last two stones cut were aquamarine recut projects.
The first of these is a stone I picked up in Tucson a few years ago from a dealer who was running a retirement sale. The stone had a serious chip in the upper left corner (bit hard to see) and was windowed. But the price was fine if it was considered rough or a preform.
It started out as 13.30 carats. The pavilion angle was about 30 degrees — well below the critical angle for beryl (39.5) and recommended angle for beryl. After recutting it weighed 9.29 carats and measured 18.0 x 9.9 x 7.2 mm. A pattern of concave facets were used on the pavilion so it has a much more interesting look than a vanilla emerald cut.
The second stone is one that sat in the drawer for over three decades. Originally it was a large triangular preform. I had been faceting for a few years at that point, but did not have that much experience working on preforms. I ended up following the depth of the preform too far resulting with too little material left for the crown. The table was huge and the stone looked dumb.
So finally I got the courage to rework the stone. The recut lost a couple mm. in the width and quite a bit of weight as a result. The end result is still a big stone — 25.78 carats and 19.4 mm. across.