How To Cut Gemstones - Topaz

Good day there viewers my name is Cliff and welcome to my channel called Vintage Time. I'd like to extend a warm welcome to all my current subscribers and to those people who are watching this video for the very first time. So as you can see the gem in question that I'm holding is a piece of topaz and in fact this piece of topaz comes from the land of Nigeria. Now Nigerian topaz is usually alluvial based and what makes this topaz different than from Australia or from the US or some other countries is that it has a silvery hue about it so it just doesn't have that clear white look about it. It's a natural topaz which has not been heat treated so I'm really looking forward to cutting this because it doesn't come with a lot of problems so I'm not expecting anything to peel and having a hardness of 8 on the Mohs scale it should make it a facetor's dream so that's what I'm hoping unless it has a cleavage point in it which I don't think it has so on to the show. So I'm just going to start the process off first by grinding one side of the stone where I will actually be attaching the dop to. I just want to make it a contact point so it can adhere to. So by using a 240 grit disc I've just flattened the top a little bit and this side of the stone will in fact be the table and I'll attach the dop with glue to it. So the stone is being removed from the transfer jig and it's attached itself properly to the end of the dop so just having a closer look to see that everything is looking good. So the pavilion facets have been cut using a 600 grit disc as a 240 grit disc would be way too aggressive. So I've been cutting the two end pavilion facets and being an odd shaped stone I'm losing a little bit of one end but that's to be expected so far everything is looking good. Adjusted the index wheel in the protractor now I'm set to cut a few more pavilion facets. So the pavilion main facets have been cut now I'm cutting the girdle facets and just getting the stone to size. So often problems arise when you're cutting gems and in this case I've got the toothpick out to highlight where the inclusion has shown up if I can just line up the toothpick with the inclusion. So here we have it and this is most likely a cleavage plane within the stone and it's starting to run so I'm going to get out a fine grit disc and I'm going to try to grind it out as logic tells me a more aggressive disc will make that cleavage run even further into the stone. So I've cut that inclusion out and like anything it comes at a cost I've lost more weight on this gem but I'd rather have a clean gem than a gem that's got a inclusion or a crack running through So now I'm starting to get into it more and I've been cutting a few extra corner girdle facets and I've been using a 3000 grit disc on it because it's not a big stone and just working on the second tier of pavilion facets also using the 3000 grit disc so the stone is starting to take shape on the pavilion side of things. So I've cut all the pavilion and girdle facets and got down to the 3000 grit disc so that means only one thing the next step for me is to start polishing it. So I'm using 50000 diamond grit to polish on my tin lap and as you can see I'm just using the outer edge of the lap because the stone is so tiny don't need to use a whole lap. So I've transferred the block overnight after polishing the girdle and the pavilion facets so now I'm set to cut the crown. So here comes the tricky part I'm cutting the crown facets down to the girdle line and it's going to be quite a thin girdle being a small stone and here in Australia usually most of the girdles are thin compared to in the US and I do think a thinner girdle looks better but it means it's going to be harder to mount in a jewelry setting. So we're getting close to the end of this video and closer to finishing this gem so I've polished the upper crown facets after completing the table. I've still got to polish these side facets but you'll see that in the next clip. So this is the end of the narration and we still have the final reveal so I'd like to thank all my subscribers for taking the time to watch my videos so if you wish to subscribe hit that subscribe button and more importantly hit the icon button if you want to receive future videos so take care everybody and bye for now.