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INDEX
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The faceter stands aloof and apart from the crowd, the elite of the rock hobbyists. To cut a stone like a brilliant or pendeloque looks very complicated; indeed, much too hard for a mere rockhound. That was the
very reason I've been determined to learn to facet. I've always been one for a challenge. Tell me something is too hard and I'll bust my neck to prove you wrong.
I picked up a used MDR faceting machine about a year ago at an auction and recently moved it from my carport workshop into a corner of my kitchen. While in Quartzsite this winter I picked up a large, 72 carat
smoky quartz faceted stone. I called it my "inspiration" and placed it on my faceting desk for motivation.
There it sat, the motivation stone, reminding me day after day, until I finally screwed up my courage. On a Friday afternoon I propped up a copy of Facet Cutter's Handbook, by Edward J. Soukup, on the desk, and picked out a nice piece of clear quartz. I
live in rural Idaho where no faceting instructors nor classes exist. If I was to accomplish this learning I was on my own. Soukup's book explained step by step how to facet a stone. The faceting machine was used when I bought it so I have no owners
manual. I dug out an MDR parts catalog to know what the parts of the machine are called. I found the instructions for a standard brilliant, Soukup said that's where a beginner should start, and began working on my stone.
"A beginner should be able to facet a 10 mm. stone in about 6 hours." Soukup wrote. A long afternoon's work, I thought, a piece-of-cake. I cut the end off a clear quartz crystal. Since it was basically round I rough shaped it into a 15 mm. preform on
my 80 grit wheel in my outdoor carport workshop. I chose a big crystal to preform so I could see what I was doing. The rough grind went fast; I wasted no time. Late winter in Idaho isn't very warm. Wet hands get cold fast outdoors.
At the facet machine, the parts catalog told what an index gear was, but not how to disconnect it from the arm so the arm and dop can rotate freely on the lap. The instruction book said to do just that, with the arm set at 90 degrees. I tried holding the
index gear clamp open with one hand while spinning the arm with the other hand but that was a pain, not at all satisfactory! I finally stuck a small Allen wrench through a tiny hole just below the index gear and, Voila! It stayed disconnected. The arm
spun freely. When the preform was rounded I removed the Allen wrench; the gear and arm were connected properly again.
The instruction book said to set the angle at 45 degrees with the bottom of the 45 degree table attachment flat on the lap, then put in the stone into the table attachment. The problem, once the stone was inserted into the table attachment, the angle was
not on 45 degrees anymore. Somehow the author forgot a step there, but that was only a minor adjustment.
When rough grinding, the table flattened out easily but when I went from 1200 grit to cerium oxide, the polish wanted to spread from the left side of the stone. It was a good sized stone and seemed to be taking an awfully long time. When the polish was
about half way across the face of the table of the stone I loosened the screw that held the dopped stone in the 45 degree table attachment, turned the stone around, tightened it down, and polished the other side of the stone. There was a tiny spot at the
top that didn't want to polish so I used the cheater. An inspection of the polished table with a pen light showed three little mini-facets right across the center of the polished face. No matter how much I polished they wouldn't come out. If they would
have been at the side of the table I could have left them because I would cut them off when I cut the table facets but they were right across the center. I had to get rid of them. I returned to 600 grit again and again. I reground the table three times
before I decided to stop twisting the stone in the 45 degree table attachment during the polishing and let the polish spread across the face of the table at its leisure. Even though it seemed to take forever it eventually did spread across the face of the
stone. The mini-facets were gone. Lesson learned: don't turn the stone in the table attachment. Some people take awhile to understand.
It took me 10 hours to make a 15 mm. preform and polish the table. So much for the piece-of-cake long afternoon's activity.
Once I got the table polished, the crown angles cut fairly easy. It only took only 2 hours. The instruction book talked about an angle stop to keep from over cutting the angles. I don't think my machine has one. If it does, I couldn't figure out where
it's located. Instead I eyeballed the protractor to know when to stop. I also wore my optivisor while cutting the facets, checking the facets for scratches, and watching the protractor to
know when to stop grinding.
I can see why people get hooked on faceting. Even with the problems so far, it's great! If I'd have known it was this much fun I'd have moved my faceting machine into my kitchen a long time ago.
It was midnight when I called it the end of day one. It's a good thing my children are all grown and out of the nest. I lost track of time and dinner was, "Get yourself something out of the refrigerator tonight hubby," at my house.
Why is it, when I cut the facets, I carefully wrote the degrees of the angles down and every other detail I thought might be useful later; but when I came back to the stone the next day to polish those same facets, they'd moved half a degree one
direction or the other. Plus they didn't always move the same direction. Finding exactly where those first few facets were was a frustrating experience. I thought for a minute I had turned the page of the instruction book and didn't realize it. I wondered
was I on the right stone? But I fiddled with the machine, adjusted the cheater, changed the angle a little and after wading stop-and-go through a few facets the behavior of the machine started to make sense and and a pattern started to emerge. Soon I
could predict which direction to move the cheater and the angle to get the polish to move across the facet. It took some trial and error and feeling my way along but I finally figured out how to put the facet where I wanted it on the lap. After that
hurdle, polishing the facets was fairly predictable, occasionally a stubborn scratch, but otherwise O.K.
My big 72 carat smoky quartz faceted stone that I've been calling it my "inspiration" has been setting on my faceting desk for motivation. After I finished polishing the crown of my stone, I was examining that "inspiration stone." When I bought it in
Quartzsite, I thought it looked pretty good, but now I could see scratches on the table, some of the facets have chips in them here and there, the girdle is not polished and is uneven, one side is thicker than the other. I'd never seen those flaws
before. Maybe by learning to facet I'm becoming some big critic about faceted stones. I haven't even finished faceting my first stone and I can already see more than I ever did before in the quality of a faceted stone. Is that a sign?
End of day two.
Early Sunday morning, day three, I transferred the stone from one dop to the other, ground the pavilion facets, being careful to leave, as Soukup suggested, "the width of a flat toothpick for the girdle" and started polishing. I'd polished three or four
pavilion facets. (When polishing cabochons I'd always found that the polish spreads faster across the stone if the wheel is almost but not quite dry and spinning very fast. I was using this information rather successfully, I might add. ) The facets were
polishing in just a few seconds. Because of the slightly but not quite dry lap, and the fast speed, the stone was a little warm, but it wasn't too bad. I was checking the temperature regularly.
I was having trouble finding the angle of a facet, having to hunt for it, when the stone fell out of the dop onto the floor. Lucky that subject had been discussed on the "Faceter's Digest" recently. (Facetor's Digest is an on-line faceter's daily
newsletter, a gathering of faceters and would-be faceters who leave comments and suggestions for other faceters and would-be faceters.) I didn't get too nervous about the lost stone. I just picked it up off the floor, grabbed the super glue, and stuck the
stone right back into the hole it fell out of. I increased the water drip to the lap, slowed the speed down a tad (just in case the temperature was what caused the stone to come out of the dop wax) and started hunting for the facet again. One and one half
hours later I was still hunting. I wanted to throw the stone, the machine and the works into the yard.
Instead I took break. A hot soak in the bathtub, a pop, a couple of minutes of "The Nanny" on the boob tube, and I was ready to work on the stone again. I knew I'd have to regrind the pavilion facets to know exactly where the angle was. After the
regrind I found the facets right away but was having a problem with getting the polish to come up. So I changed polishing laps. I had been using Lucite so I decided to try the wood and the polish went great. I just had to go a little up here and down a
little there, a little to the left, a little to the right and the stone was finished.
I removed it from the dop, cleaned the super glue off with acetone, cleaned the stone with alcohol to be sure there was nothing to mar the shine, placed it into a pronged facet stone holder, pulled over a lamp and
it was beautiful! No diamond was ever prettier.
Because I had to regrind the pavilion facets, the girdle ended up practically non-existent. But I've bought stones with girdles just as thin. (Maybe the person who faceted those stone had to regrind too.) The pavilion stars and the crown stars are lined
up. I find that amazing considering I dropped the stone on the floor. All totaled I my stone took 25 hours: 10 to cut the preform and polish the table (including returning to 600 grit three times), 2 hours to cut the crown facets, 4 hours to polish
the crown facets and 7 hours to cut and polish the pavilion facets (including losing the stone on the floor and regrinding the facets.)
If I had had an instructor sitting at my elbow telling me step by step what to do and what not to do I would have probably cut the stone faster. But I would have saved the mistakes for later. I'm one of those people who has to see for herself, why.
Eventually I would have tried those bad practices to find out what happens.This way, through my ignorance, I took the mistakes out to their logical conclusion right away. I will remember why. Hopefully, I won't do them again.
I was feeling pretty proud of myself, bragging to anyone who would listen, until my son, the math major, came home from college about a week after I'd finished my first stone. He put it into perspective, fairly quickly. "Let me try it, mom." He sat
down at the faceting machine, I showed him what I had learned, so far. I wasn't sure of the relationships of the angles to one another and insisted he have the cutting instructions right there and follow them faithfully. He loves to ad lib and be
creative.
He ground a couple of rows of facets and soon had it all figured out. In just a few hours he faceted a stone and made adjustments for a deeper belly on the pavilion than the instructions called for and added an extra row of facets. It all came out
fine.
I told him, "You may be my son and I love you dearly but you're not getting my faceting machine. If you want one you have to buy your own."
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Copyright, 1997 by Dixie Thomas Reale
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"I have been a rock hound for as long as I can remember. As a child on the farm I would swipe my daddy's hammer and sit in the driveway breaking granite rocks to see what they looked like inside. Those plain looking rocks were pink, green, and blue
inside. I grew up a few miles from Succor Creek Canyon (famous for thunder eggs) on the Idaho/Oregon border. I smashed countless crystal lined nodules on the ground to see what was inside. What a waste.
"My college training was in creative writing, with a minor in anthropology. I've always been an artifact hound, fascinated with aboriginal cultures, which goes hand in hand with rockhounding, prospecting, and communing with nature. I've been a writer
probably as long as I have seriously collected rocks. I currently write on a freelance basis, selling regularly to the local newspaper. I've published many fiction short stories in regional literary magazines, published nonfiction articles in national
magazines like Broomstick, Black Belt, Rock and Gem, and even sold a travelogue to a television show back in the 1960s when I was in college.
"I'm middle aged now. The last child left the nest about 6 years ago. I have a small rock shop, set up in my garage, called Kounting House from the nursery rhyme, 'Sing a song of sixpence'. My business logo is a Jewel pie with blackbirds flying out
of it.
"I quit my day job last summer and have been completely self employed since July 1. I am doing the two things I love the most. I write till I get tired of writing, then I play with my rocks till I get tired of playing with the rocks and then back to the
writing. Since my shop is in my home and I'm not always available, if anyone wishes to stop by please call ahead. (208)324-3670."
Dixie Thomas Reale
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