Cutting my own gemstone design in Blue Topaz

Hello, welcome to Matt's Corner of Gem Cutting. I will be cutting a design that I've created myself and I wanted to do that in a piece of topaz. This one here has come out of old jewelry. It has some chips and other nicks and little signs of wear, so it makes a great candidate. So before I get started on the cutting, I rough the table just a little bit so it doesn't have that smooth polished surface so that the superglue will adhere better to the stone. I draw some crosshair marks on the surface of the stone to mark where I want the center point of my cut to be and I also put marks onto my dop stick so I could use these marks for aligning the dop to the stone to get it centered. Once I have that ready, I place a drop of superglue onto the stone and place the dop and press firmly. I give it a quick check to see if it aligned where I wanted it to. In this case, the stone looks slightly off so I break the bond and move it over slightly until it looked more centered. After another check, I add just a little bit more superglue to the outside edge of the dop and the stone and then I let it sit overnight to let the glue set up. I start by using a heavier 180 grit to give this piece a slight preform as the shape of my diagram is very different than this piece I am starting with. So I use the 180 grit to cut in my girdle facets until they fit into the piece I have the work with and then I also cut in the first tier pavilion facets until they meet a center point and look like a good starting point for moving on. With the stone roughed in, I use a 600 grit lap to cut in all the facets on the pavilion side of the stone. I've sped up most of these cutting clips to two times speed to show more of the cutting process while maintaining quick progression within the video. And if you've seen my other videos, you've likely noticed that my picture quality has improved. I bought a new camera between this video and my last one for that reason and so far I am really liking it. It looks pretty good. This design that I am using for the stone is one of the first cutting diagrams that I came up with. I created it while I was still in the learning stages of faceting. As I became more experienced, I went back and I optimized the design to improve the light performance. The inspiration for this design comes from Link's blue shield from The Legend of Zelda The Wind Waker, which is one of the games that I played growing up. I wanted to have the iconic Triforce in a shield shape cut. My design actually has a symmetrical trillion outline, but I was able to accomplish what I wanted by having a shield-like design with a prominent Triforce. I wanted to cut this design in a blue stone as to keep the same color as the shield from the game, so I chose blue topaz. Topaz has a hardness of 8. This makes it a great stone for use in jewelry as it doesn't wear real easily. Its bright blue color comes from color enhancing a natural crystal through a process using irradiation. This is a typical treatment for most topaz in jewelry. I really like the high luster of topaz. It shines up really nicely and makes some great pieces when cut. It is usually clean of inclusions and makes a great natural material for showing the intricate artistry that goes into a design. The way the light moves through a stone based upon the angles and position of the facets can create lighter or darker areas within a stone, and topaz shows the contrast very well. On to the next stage of cutting this gemstone. I used a 3000 grit diamond on a tin lap. This is a pre-polishing stage, meaning I use the 3000 as an intermediate grit to grind away the coarseness of the 600 grit and prepare the stone for receiving a nice final polish. Being able to create my own designs really adds to my experience as a gem cutter. I am not limited to the standard cuts or designs that others have made available. I can use my imagination to think of all sorts of possible designs to try creating that are unique and original to myself. I feel more connected with my work when it is all something that I have done myself, from design to cut and polish. The finished piece is completely my own artwork. I have the pre-polishing phase completed. I will use 50000 diamond grit on another tin lap for the final polish. I give a quick squirt with a squirt bottle to just lightly lubricate the surface of the lap so I'm not cutting completely dry. I don't want to flood the lap with water as this will cause the lap to need to be recharged sooner, and cutting on the lap nearly dry works really well for polishing. Check out the polish with the 50k right next to the 3k. It's a pretty big difference. 50000 grit is a really nice polish. It can really bring out the life in a stone and make it just pop. The pavilion side is all polished up and it is looking good. To transfer the stone I picked out a cone dop which will fit nicely onto the stone. I'll place the dop of the stone into the top and I'll place the cone dop into the bottom of this transfer jig. I'll use some gel super glue into the cone dop for the transfer and slide them together and let that set up. All right it's about time to set so let's take it out. I need to wet some paper towel. This will keep the side I've transferred it to cool while I use a flame to remove the original dop. I'm using an alcohol lamp and I hold the side that's being heated with a pair of pliers. Let's come up and we're ready to get cutting on the crown side. When placing a stone back in the quill for cutting the crown side it needs to be aligned properly for the facets to cut in right. I can get it in fairly close to alignment just by eyeballing it at first but then as I'm cutting it I check to see how well the new facets I am cutting compared to level wise with the girdle and the pavilion facets and there's this cheater on the side of the mast here that black knob I'm twisting slightly rotates the stone for alignment and I just make slight adjustments using that until the new facets I am cutting are parallel with the girdle so that I when I cut in all my crown facets they'll be exactly where they need to be in a line properly. Using a diagram is nice in that it gives you the angles and the index for each facet that is to be cut but how far you actually cut in the facet is all done by eye. As you cut it in you look at the facet that you're cutting and you just keep cutting it in until it is where it needs to be. There's usually some sort of meet on the stone that based on what you previously cut in that the next here will meet at in some way whether it's a meet at the girdle or a point on one of the previous facets that you cut in. Even ones that are cut in you still have to look at the stone quite a bit while cutting. When you get to the pre-polish and the polishing stages you still have to make sure that it's polishing correctly and even evenly throughout the facet and make any adjustments needed or cut more until it's properly cut for that stage of the stone. Here we have the crown done with the pre-polish and it's ready for polish with the 50,000. It's got rid of all the grit marks from the 600 that damage of that grit. While I'm polishing with the 50,000 the final polish is one of the most important steps when cutting a gemstone as anything left on the surface of the stone will be seen so you don't want to have scratching or other things going on. Sometimes you have to work the lap or change up your approach when cutting to get the polish just right and perfect. I didn't have much issues with this topaz. It polished fairly smoothly. The only thing left now is the cut in the table and this bad boy will be done. And with the crown cut in you can see just how nice the polish is on this stone. It is looking really good and can't wait to see it off the top. It's looking gorgeous. Because I use super glue to dot my stones I have to use acetone to dissolve the super glue to avoid chipping or damaging the stone but it's worth the wait. I don't want to damage stones after I put so much effort into cutting them by trying to heat the stone off. And here it is all finished up. It is a nice shiny piece that's for sure. It's got a lot of sparkle, lots of contrast, really looks just great. So it finished up at 11.4 millimeters in size and is 4.15 carats. So pretty good sized piece and I really like it being my own design. You can see the triforce pretty well on the crown here. It's the main thing I was going for but the design also has kind of a border with that outer set of facets on this crown that kind of create the border on the shield. And it just has a overall pretty pleasant look and I'm really happy with my design. Anyway thank you for coming along with me as I showed you the process of cutting my design in this stone and I hope to have you back to see more of the fun designs and stones that I'll be cutting here in the future. Thank you!