We will be demonstrating gem faceting this week at the Orcutt Mineral Society Show being held Friday through Sunday at Nipomo High School.
Finally got around to posting another batch of new gems on my gems website.
Other activities like keeping up with the garden (http://gallery.vistagrande.com/gallery/album.aspx?aid=198) have kept me from having time with the faceting machine lately.
I will be demonstrating faceting during the San Luis Gem and Mineral Show this weekend, Saturday June 17 and Sunday June 18. The show is being held at the Cambria Vets Hall from 10am to 5pm each day. Parking and Admission are free.
See http://www.slogem.org/4-shows.html for additional information
Just added ten more stones to the gallery.
Or, if you are in Paso Robles this weekend, you can see them in person at my booth at the Rock club show being held at the fairgrounds.
Image is of an ametrine weighing 8.37 cts. which has concave facets decorating the pavilion.
Join me this weekend, April 22 and 23, at the Paso Robles event center (Midstate fairgrounds) for the Santa Lucia Rockhounds Annual Rock and Gem Show.
http://www.slrockhounds.org/santaluciarockhoundshow.html
I will have a table there and will be showing off an assortment of unique gemstones which I have faceted which will be available for sale.
Hours are from 10 am - 5 pm Saturday and 10 am - 4 pm Sunday.
If you can't make it this weekend, I expect to be demonstrating faceting at the San Luis Obispo and Orcutt club shows this summer.
Three garnets and the rest of the dozen are quartz varieties -- citrine and amethyst. A few of those have concave facets.
Another batch of garnets just posted. The rough material for these came from several countries in Africa as well as India and even the USA.
I usually don't take photos of the rough gem material. However, because I had a few questions about what it looks like before it is faceted, I did remember one day to get some pictures of parcels I had recently acquired. Now that I have cut some of those pieces, I have a group of "before" and "after" pictures of few garnets.
Obviously in these photos, the scale is not consistent. However, you can see some typical rough garnet and what was done with it. Most of the garnet rough I have encountered is similar to water worn pebbles rather than a nice geometric crystal.
In some cases, a very fine saw may be used to split the material or remove excess material. However, the bulk of the faceting work is done by grinding off the excess to create each facet of the gem. The faceting process involves first removing flaws in the material and shaping the stone with a coarse grit. Then with a finer grit, each of the facets is cut. Often a very fine grit is used to produce a "prepolish" on the facets. Then each facet is polished with an extremely fine grit or an oxide to produce essentially a mirror finish. It is not unusual for two thirds or more of the original rough material to end up as sludge in the bottom of the splash pan of the faceting machine.
Most faceters in the US try to do precision cutting -- angles chosen are to maximize the light return and all facets properly shaped meeting its neighbors exactly according to a predetermined pattern. Another approach to faceting is what is often labeled "native cut". In that case, the material is cut to maximize the weight of the finished stone, often at the expense of the brilliance. The facets on native cut stones also tend not to meet nicely, they are misshaped and do not line up with each other. One other major difference between "native cut" and precision cut, is the polish.
The short version: Like a number of others who enjoy turning rough into sparkling gemstones, I have found a way to give something back to one of the areas where the gem rough originates. All the money from the sale of the Malawi garnets I have cut will go to the K.I.N.D. fund to provide scholarships for Malawian girls' high school education. See http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/introducing-the-kind for the background on the fund.
The longer story...
I have had a soft spot for garnets since I started faceting. Perhaps it is because they cooperated in the polishing stage better than many other types of material. Or maybe it is because the material I had was the common red variety of garnet and red goes well with my favorite color, green, to make the traditional Christmas colors. Probably it is because when I was very young my mother told me that garnet was her birthstone -- and she never had a real garnet.
The second factor in picking this project has been that education has been a huge part of my life. My dad found his vocation as an educator. For a number of years my mother worked as a secretary in an elementary school. And when circumstances allowed her to obtain her college degree, she became a special education teacher. A great many of our family friends were folks they knew from the schools where they worked. Furthermore, the importance of education for girls is something with which I had much personal experience. As a female baby boom child, the world I found had many doors closed for girls. It was just assumed that after high school girls would get some clerical job, or perhaps enter nursing or teach elementary school children or work in a retail store. And generally that career was going to be just long enough to land a husband. Even recreation focused on the boys. Our neighborhood had little league baseball games for the boys all summer long. There was no sports in the community for girls. Because my parents cared so much for the value of education and were willing and able to make the sacrifice needed for the tuition, I went to a private school. There I was exposed to much more than what would have been the case for the girls who went to the local schools. That led to the high school experience and eventual college degree -- an opportunity that many of the girls of my generation never had. I cannot imagine how different my life would have been without the education I was lucky to have received.
The third piece in this project was the Lawrence O’Donnell show on MSNBC. Around the holidays he talked about his experiences in Malawi and the K.I.N.D. fund. The lack of opportunity for girls to get even a high school education is something that would likely keep them and their future families in poverty. Those stories and the images of the young girls stuck with me.
Thus when I came upon a rough dealer's page of garnets with many from Malawi, the pieces came together. All money from the sales of gems I facet from Malawi garnet rough will go to the K.I.N.D. scholarships for the Malawi girls.
It was right at the beginning of a mid-November trip to Costco. We went by the tables that were stacked with books - the kind that made nice holiday gifts. Of course, I had to check out what they had. Perhaps there would be one my daughter would like in her library - the kind with lots of pictures she uses for reference in her illustration work. Perhaps there were some of those, but I never saw them. Instead "Gem: The Definitive Visual Guide" by published by DK had my full attention. It was heading into my cart almost before I could flip through the pages. DK books tend to be exceptional visual treats loaded with terrific images. And the price was not going to break the budget. (It is currently listed on Amazon for $25.)
Gem is the typical large coffee table book size. At 440 pages and over 5 1/2 pounds, it is not a lightweight. Typically, gem books tend to go alphabetically or if they are jewelry focused, they tend to follow historical and geographical lines. I have no clue yet how the ordering of Gem was determined. (Perhaps when I stop just looking at the pretty pictures and read some of the text sections, I will eventually figure that part out.) The good thing about that so far seems to be that you can open just about anywhere and not feel like you have missed something. Perfect for the coffee table book which isn't usually given a front to back read.
Once nice characteristic is that it includes images and information of the rough gems along with cut gems and those in jewelry plus a bit of romancing the stone stories related to the gems. My impression of the contents is: imagine you have the best museum of gems, minerals and jewels and then a tour guide who knows it all - the technical data and the historical details and maybe some gossipy trivia to go along with it all. That is what you will find in Gem.
If you like books on gems, minerals and jewelry, or need a gift for someone who does, this is a must.