As a reminder here is the diagram of the cut being done.
We left off last time with a mistake that needed to be corrected. I over cut the final tier on the first facet. So I decided to switch to my pre-polish lap the 3000 grit, and pre-polish the girdle.
Then I recut the tiers using the pre-polish 3000 lap.
2nd Tier:
3rd Tier:
4th and 5th Tiers:
For polish I use a tin lap that has had 60k diamond paste applied. I run this at a low speed and use a spray bottle instead of the drip tank for lubrication.
Polishing goes very fast, only a few swipes across the lap and a facet is done. Here are the 2nd and 3rd tiers polished.
Finally the pavilion is polished. My apologies for the blurry picture but my phone just can't seem to focus on the polished surface all that well up close.
Now that the pavilion is complete, I need to transfer the stone to another dop in order to cut the other half. I do this with the transfer jig. I place the current dop in making sure that the angled piece if firmly against the slide. This is allows both dops to be aligned at the index level.
At this point I'll carefully push the new dop up against the stone. Notice that the new dop has a concave surface to better hold the pavilion. Then I'll glue the stone to the new dop and let that set.
Next time I'll start on the crown of the stone.
