"Diamond Nine" cut in citrine

[RoughCreations]

Showing off my recently completed 27.2ct Tasmanian Gladstone citrine.
"Diamond Nine" Fusion-style cut taken from Andrew Brown's Faceting Design book (Volume 1).

https://youtu.be/ArrIj2DO_Z0

https://youtu.be/5woIm3EHeuc

RC.

[Faceting Frank]

Very impressive, what did you polish it with, Diamond or Cerium?

[RoughCreations]

Thanks, used some cerium on an old Darkside lap. Slow rotation, good quality A-grade 2 micron white cerium oxide polish powder from Aussie Sapphire.

[harryopal]

It looks to be flawless. How do you rate the cut?

[MakkyBrown]

Very nice mate, these big stone fusion designs you are cutting are very impressive.

[Bucket]

Makky, the more I see of your designs the more I'm liking them, I have your books on my Christmas list. Rough Creations, looks really great, great finish!

[Faceting Frank]

What grade diamond did you use before polishing? 

[RoughCreations]

Hi Frank, I used a 200# ebonite diamond disk, followed by an 800# ebonite diamond disk.
I have discussed the ebonite disks in detail in other posts.
The Fusion designs seem to work in various RI ranges really well, there is a lady on Instagram from Melbourne cutting some amazing Fusion sapphires: https://www.instagram.com/pebblesprout/
I have only tried quartz so far - my Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/roughcreation/
RC

[RoughCreations]

Very nice mate, these big stone fusion designs you are cutting are very impressive.

Thanks, I don't understand why they work so well in humble old quartz, but you seem to get a weird 3D star coming at you!

[RoughCreations]

It looks to be flawless. How do you rate the cut?

The stone itself is effectively flawless (inclusions hard to find under 10x loupe). The cut is very straightforward, with only 13 crown facets and 24 pavilion facets. With big stones like this (21mm across the widest flats) a level of cheating happens, small inaccuracies in the machine are magnified.

See the Diamond Nine pavilion below:



Look at it carefully - see the asymmetry of it?
This must be part of the hocus-pocus of the Fusion designs.

[Faceting Frank]

Hi Rough Creations, went through your thread again about Ebonite laps. I can see the finish they produce is far finer for the grit size than a normal bonded diamond lap. In fact look finer than 3k on a BATT lap. Great finish as a pre polish.

[MakkyBrown]

The ebonite laps are basically like Nubond laps I think, great for soft material but may well cause orange peel on sapphire and harder materials especially the 800#. I'm about to test some Chinese resin laps and see how they go. Expecting them to be similar to the ebonite and Nubond.

Roughcreations you are going to like volume 3, it has checker fusion ovals and a couple of other fusion designs. I've been really enjoying Pebblesprout cutting my design in sapphire. Beautiful cutting.
MB

[Faceting Frank]

There’s a three page article about polishing quartz in the current Australian Facetors Guild facet talk. I haven’t read all of it yet, but one bit of advice that interested me was sanding your Lucite lap instead of scoring. I rip mine apart with a broken hacksaw blade and pile the pressure on when polishing with cerium.
So this is the opposite to what I do, the lap sanded with 800 grit wet and dry and light pressure when polishing.

[Shifter55]

Thanks, I don't understand why they work so well in humble old quartz, but you seem to get a weird 3D star coming at you!

The pavillion tiers remind me of a round brilliant I saw in an article once - I think it was called NOMAG? Same bar-shaped mains.
Really that odd pavillion symmetry is doing a lot of work, you can almost always take them to steeper mains angles than even ones.