How To Facet The World's Most Spectacular Gem!

Good day there viewers and welcome to my channel called Vintage Time. My name is Cliff and I'm a gem cutter from Australia. A warm welcome to all my regular subscribers and viewers. I'm really glad that you can join me once again and if this is the first time you've seen my channel well I believe you're in for a very special treat because you'll be witnessing in my opinion one of the greatest gems ever designed, the Cleopatra's Eye. Before I start fastening I do need to give a special credit to Bob Keller the designer of the Cleopatra's Eye. Not only is it a very clever design but it's intricate and complex and it would be considered to be the holy grail of all the gem designs out there. The reason I say this is that many faceters have attempted it and many faceters have failed and there are so few good examples of this particular gem seen actually faceted. So that in itself would suggest that the gem cutter would have to have a high level of skill and proficiency to get this gem actually cut. So this design can be downloaded off the internet but Bob does give us a few clues on the second page as you can see now. So he drops in a little clue on the bottom of the first paragraph where he says that this just isn't a meat point type and he says I've yet to work out a meat point or mostly so. In fact this is just a guide or recipe to getting the gem cut. The real skill will lie within the abilities of the faceter and their abilities to float in facets to meat points as they move through the design schedule. So this means the mast will need to be continually lifted and protractor angles continually adjusted and this means notes will also have to be taken of those adjustments. So if you're the type of gem cutter that just likes to stick to the design, set the protractor at the angle that the design tells you to and cut down to depth then you're not going to do very well in this design because you're going to have to be very adaptable as you move through all the meat points to get them right. So let's talk about faceting and we'll discuss more design elements later on. As you can see I haven't preformed the rough gem, sometimes I go about the process of preforming it into a shape. All I've done this time is just drawn out the shape or the basic outline on the top of the gem, glued the dot on and I'll do the preform all from the machine by grinding out the basic rough shape out first. In the following scenes you'll see by the use of a 100 grit topper lap which is a very coarse diamond lap that the gem is starting to take shape. Now I would consider this to be just the initial preform of the gem, so this is all done on my faceting machine rather than preforming the gem by hand. So to get it to this stage you're looking at about 20 minutes to half an hour's work because you really are grinding away a lot of material quickly. So the next step is to start really working on this pavilion, smoothing out the pavilion facets creating a perfect meet point, so I'm using my 600 grit diamond topper lap now. So creating a perfect centre point with an even spread of the pavilion facets is critical to the entire outcome of the gem being faceted accurately when you do the transfer. It will also determine the accuracy on the second tier facets, the barian facets as they meet the girdle outline. So the next couple of steps will be still concentrating on the pavilion, doing a pre-polish and then a final polish on these pavilion 1 facets. Now I'm using my copper lap now with a 4500 pre-polish diamond paste and then later on I'll move on to my tin lap using a 50000 diamond compound. Now I'm still concentrating on creating that perfect centre point with an even spread of the facets and as you can see now we've done the pre-polish and then the next step will be of course the final polish. So this is the first step in the process for me faceting this gem, of course other faceters will probably use a different method by cutting all the facets from the pavilion up through the girdle outline probably to the pre-polish stage and then polishing everything in sequence but I'm going to take these little steps. So once the perfect centre point has been created and I've done this to the best of my ability then the barian facets and the girdle facets should all align to perfect meet points. So now that the barian and the girdle facets are complete I'll go on to the pre-polishing of the girdle facets which has already been done and then I'll polish them as you can see now, then I'll go on to the barian facets on the pavilion, I'll do a pre-polish on the copper lap and then do the final polish of those facets. So as you can see here the girdle outline is fully polished so that means I will pre-polish those barian facets that look still a little bit on the rough side but that means I can actually tweak in those corner facets to a perfect meet point when I do the pre-polish and the final polish. So as you can see here in this piece of footage the pavilion is fully cut and polished so the next step will be to do a transfer of the gem and then facet the crown but before we do that let's have a look at some elements of the design. So before I even started the project I inputted all the angles and indexes from the original Bob Keller design into GemCutStudio and I found a few anomalies with meet points not meeting correctly. Now these C1 facets that I'm highlighting were out by 4 degrees. Of course I had to spend a little bit of time trying to adjust these angles but these angles being out by so much affect these C2 facets next to them and all the surrounding facets so that would also determine the height of the crown and how large the table of the crown will be. So I'm ready to start faceting the crown and what you see now is the secondary transfer where a dopstick has been glued onto the gem. To see how I remove the original dopstick by heat I'll drop in a link in the description area. This is something I rarely ever do normally after the secondary transfer I just lock in the dop into the quill because my dopsticks have a groove slot and I just key in the pin and then tighten up the grub screw but in this case I do need to make an exception. So what I've done I've unlocked the grub screw on the quill now the dopstick is free spinning I've placed a little bit of sewing machine oil on the base plate I've got the corner facet marked with a highlighter pen I've also locked in the corresponding index for that corner which was index 88. So I have the protractor angle set at roughly about 89.7 degrees now because the dopstick is free spinning I can just line it up perfectly flat on my base plate tighten up the grub screw so now everything should be perfectly aligned. So I've used a 100 grit topper lap to cut the first tier of the crown facets down to depth be a little bit careful with the 100 grit lap because it will chip a lot so don't get too close to that girdle outline. In the following scenes you'll see how I develop the crown moving from the tiers at the base of the girdle all the way to the table. So to create consistency that I maintain perfect meet points or as perfect as they can be I am using the same sequential order of my laps on each tier as I move along. So for example I'm using a 600 grit diamond topper lap followed by my 800 grit topper lap and then I'll be doing my pre-polish on the copper lap using a 4500 diamond paste and then finally I do the final polish on a tin lap with a 50000 grit diamond compound. Here's a little tip for those people who are learning how to facet and you're a hobby recreational faceter always cut a little and look a lot and I do this all the time because I'm not a commercial cutter so I can take my time and you'll find by doing this you'll get less overcuts and you will get a high quality gem. You'll also notice in this scene I'm using a very light touch and I'm just taking my time lowering the mast looking at my gem looking where this depth of the facet is coming to as it comes to a meet point. Really important to take your time look carefully and cut a little. So once again the crown is starting to take shape and take form and if you take note you'll notice how I'm trying to get my meet points as perfect as possible. So while we're going through some of the sequences of the crown I thought I would mention that if you really are a serious gem cutter and you really want to learn the hobby and develop your skills I would highly recommend that at some point that you buy either Gem Cut Studio or you buy GemCAD and start learning how to use this software. I personally found there came a time when I did have to buy such software because I did want to learn how to design my own gems but not only that sometimes you would come across certain designs that would not work out and the reason why they didn't work out is because they weren't correct in the first place. So having eventually bought Gem Cut Studio then I could input all those angles and indexes and look at where things were wrong and then try to re-correct that design myself. Now I'm still learning how to use this software I'm no expert in it but I would suggest that if you really want to advance in your gem cutting well then it really is something that you should look into. Having said that there are many gem cutters who have been faceting for many years and they are just simply happy to cut the designs they enjoy and facet the designs that work all the time. As for me I really did want to push myself very hard this year and get out of my comfort zone and facet complex and difficult designs and one of the things I've found that when you reach a certain point no one is going to hold your hand and push you any further. It's totally up to you how you progress. Anyway that's enough of the rambling for the time being let's have a look at the last couple of steps of how I go about faceting this gem. With these star facets for C8 facets a lot of people would just polish those in. I would suggest with tiny facets on any gem rather than polish them in by using your tin lap just break the surface in first and then polish them in. So as you can see here I've just broken in the surface with my copper pre-polished lap and the reason why I've done this is because if you use a soft tin lap and you've got a sharp facet you're trying to cut in then you're likely to gouge out a huge piece of that soft tin. So as you can see here the star facets have been polished into a meat point and the next step will be to cut and polish the table. So now that I'm cutting the table this means we're getting closer to the end of another video and don't forget to watch the final reveal where the gem comes off the dop stick and you get to see what it looks like fully cut and polished. So in closing I would like to say that the Cleopatra's Eye is truly one of the most spectacular amazing gems ever created. If you're a gem cutter or you're part of the jewellery industry this is truly an iconic gem. I've somehow managed to facet this gem myself so I can cross it off my bucket list. I hope one day as a gem cutter you may be able to do this gem and cross it off your bucket list. So until next time everybody take care of yourselves and I'll see you later. Bye for now.