Aquamarine

Before and After / Last Stones Before Tucson 2024

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.

 

Been a while

It has been quite a while since I posted what I have been cutting. The whole pandemic thing left me unable to feel the level of creativity required to give the larger and more expensive rough the attention it needed. So I ended up cutting left overs from parcels purchased by mail order from the back of Lapidary Journal back when I was just starting to facet. Most were small and included, and my photography skills are lacking. My camera only seems to capture the interior features and not the sparkle, especially with the smaller stones.

Now I am to the point of getting back to the newer and nicer rough. There were only a few pieces left from my 2019 Tucson visit. This 3.36 carat aquamarine cut as a blunt end marquis was from some old stock that John Garsow was offering. It is 15.4 mm. long and 7.0 mm. wide.

I just love the granny apple green of the Arizona peridots. I always am on the lookout for affordable nice pieces of rough. This 2.30 carat, 8.0 mm. round was from the pieces I picked up during my 2020 Tucson adventures.

Next is a pretty pink tourmaline from a parcel found at the 2020 Tucson Faceter’s Symposium. It came in at 2.51 carats, 8.4 mm.

Finally prasiolite quartz with concave facets on the pavilion. I’ll skip the part where being out of practice with the fantasy machine, there was an unfortunate incident requiring the pavilion to be completely recut. The fantasy machine is not forgiving when one’s attention slips. Fortunately, the rough was sufficiently deep, that the only loss was my time and my pride. The stone ended up as 11.6 mm., 7.08 carats.

 

 

Aquamarine Octagon

This little aquamarine weighs in at 0.97 carats and is 6.4 mm across. The rough material for this one came from Brazil. It is a shimmering light blue that was not adequately captured by the photo

It isn’t quartz

Finally I am cutting something other than quartz!

Pictured here is a very nice little aquamarine weighing in at 2.23 cts and measuring 8.6 x 6.9 mm. It was really nice to cut something a little smaller and more cooperative than some of the larger stones I was doing while I was getting over my broken wrist and figuring out some new laps. The rough for this stone was obtained at the Spring 2016 West Coast Gem and Mineral Show from New Era Gems (Steve Ulatowski).