Crylos

A few years ago, just prior to COVID, I made the trek to the largest gem and mineral show in the world and one of the most dangerous places for my bank account.

Some of the display minerals, and yes they were for sale, are of museum quality.

Yes I know what you're thinking about that last one.... 😜

Some of these were made into chair, bench and table:

There were multiple sites across the city with vendors, all as large as this.

Vendors sold beads, geodes and almost anything related to minerals.

Of course what I came for was rough to facet, and there was tons of it. At some sites there were bins full of moonstone, amethyst and other facet grade stone. The best stuff was behind counters like this one.

Honestly I spent way too much, and still haven't cut all of the rough I bought. Since COVID I've heard it isn't quite as big, but is still worth the visit.

Let's see how much a variety of rough I have...

Title says it all, just trying to find a place to see status updates…

This cabachon was done a few months back for free for someone who had collected some stone and was curious if anything could be made from it. I normally don’t do cabs as I lack the optimal equipment but this person couldn’t find someone to help them out.

Here is the rough, not much to look at is it?

The dops I use for this kind of work are just wooden dowels. Here is the stone after I’d spent time shaping and grinding it down to find the color. The difference between faceting and forming a cab, is the cab is all done by hand without the use of a cutting head.

I did a final polish, then cut off the bottom to create a flat bottom surface.

I had a super color saturated piece of pyrope that was already bit thin and long, so I decided to see if I could cut it in shallow cut to compensate for the saturation. I had some success with this cut, but in the end it takes a LOT of light to get some good light return. This picture was taken outdoors in full sun, and you can see that there is very little light coming back through the stone, even though it was cut correctly for the refractive index and critical angle.

This was one of the first sapphire's I cut. It isn't the clearest stone, as it has a hint of cloudiness inside it. I do like the color, but wish I'd cut it a bit differently to bring out more light return.

So, in my last post someone asked me if I still had the stone I first cut. This is it, a plain piece of quartz. It's pretty large measuring in at around 18.5mm or just under 3/4 of an inch in diameter. The standard brilliant cut is not a hard cut, and is a great cut to start out with. If you make mistakes it still turns out nice.

One of the biggest mistakes I made on this stone was not properly aligning the stone on transfer, and ended up with the crown being lopsided from the pavilion. You can see in the above picture how I cut out the girdle on one side of the stone. I could be self critical about this stone and point out half a dozen things I did wrong, but why bother? That was many many many moons ago, and I don't make those mistakes nearly as often. 😜

Citrine is just one of quartz's color variants. Citrine and Amethyst are the most widely sought after colors, but it can also be found in a smokey color.

It's been fun digging through some of my early work and sharing. I'll keep posting in hopes of getting others to join in. 🙃

I cut this stone a few weeks ago for my daughter who wanted a triangular stone that could be set into a ring. I'd never had the opportunity to cut a trillion before, so this was fun.

Justin K Prim is a master cutter who has a youtube channel that has an incredible set of videos that talk about the art of gemstone cutting.

These two peridots I cut a while back with the aim of created a calibrated sized pair. Unfortunately the smaller of the two was cut second and I had to cut it down due to a flaw in the stone's girdle. Peridot is one of my favorite stones to cut due to how easy they are to cut and how they come out.

A post in another community reminded me of my deep dark past. A time where I helped build an LPMud from the ground up. Lost Souls. Amazingly this MUD is STILL up and running after more than 33 YEARS.

I'm no longer on it, or even have an account. In fact I think they blocked my username along with the other wizards who were the original builders to preserve history in some fashion. My username here is the same as it was there. 😀

If you have ever played a MUD, check it out. If you haven't you might want to dip your toes in and see what it's about. If you do decide to hop on and the user Chaos is online, tell him I said hi. 🙃