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 Post subject: Re: How do you find the center of rough to attach the dop?
PostPosted: Mon Nov 26, 2018 11:18 pm 
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justinkprim wrote:
I have adjusted my personal asthetics accordingly and I must say that I have developed a deep love for classic Ceylon style mixed cut cushion stones. :)

Keep having fun everyone.


My favorite as well. Still a lot of creative things you can do with this basic pattern. Step or Portuguese pattern on pavilion facets. Splitting mains, different outline curves, and table sizes, can all add character to the mixed brilliant cut yet maintain traditional esthetics.

Usually great yields as well.


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 Post subject: Re: How do you find the center of rough to attach the dop?
PostPosted: Tue Nov 27, 2018 2:26 pm 
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Justin I find it strange you talk about the vast European market. I have found just the opposite. I have sold very few stones into Europe. With my job, I do travel to Europe often however, and have many coworkers in France, Sweden and Denmark, and none have any interest in gemstones or jewelry. I seldom see jewelry stores while walking around towns there either. I do ship a lot of stones to Singapore and Australia however. Maybe the Europeans are spending most of their money on taxes and there isn't much left for useless luxury items?
The few stones I have sold into Europe have all be of the more exotic type cut, maybe it's something they don't find often locally, I don't know. There are people in Germany doing exotic innovative cutting, but I have no idea who they are selling to.

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 Post subject: Re: How do you find the center of rough to attach the dop?
PostPosted: Tue Nov 27, 2018 9:01 pm 
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Some of the largest jewelry manufacturing companies are in Europe. They design and choose the parts (including stones) and either manufacture them there, or do production in Asia. They are sold around the World with lines of product designed for specific markets.

Every high end shopping mall has a number of famous, prestige jewelry brand stores. Jewelry in most areas of Europe is dominated by Prestige Brands. Boutique jewelers are less common there than here in the States. The prestige brands are generally conservative and traditional in their stone taste.

You are right that the European lower and middle class are not big jewelry consumers. The high income people are the primary buyers. Therefore the dominance of prestige brands.

The primarily want tradition stones, with the traditional mixed cuts. They will associate the other cuts with "fashion jewelry".

Just look at the high end auction houses extraordinary jewels event catalogues. That will show what the high end market is accepting. Pretty much every 1 carat and above colored stone will be either a step cut, or a mixed cut, or cabochon.

https://www.scribd.com/document/7011888 ... ss-Release

Even here with the forward looking AGTA, the bulk of the winning Spectrum Award stones will be some form of classic mixed or step cut. Except of course categories especially for innovative cutting.

https://agta.org/spectrum/enter-spectrum/2018-winners/

It is not like they can't do other cuts, it just doesn't make sense to do them as Justin is learning.


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 Post subject: Re: How do you find the center of rough to attach the dop?
PostPosted: Wed Nov 28, 2018 12:25 pm 
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Steve I think we just disagree here on the cutting.

From my experience, doing traditional cutting by the "gem cutter" method unless you are willing to make compromises on symmetry on beauty, you don't save any weight over other methods of cutting.

I modeled at native style cut oval and a well known meet point type oval. Both have the same length to width ratio. As you can see the has a higher V/W^3 and will produce a stone with more weight. The performance is also better. It is also faster to cut.

Image

Image

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 Post subject: Re: How do you find the center of rough to attach the dop?
PostPosted: Wed Nov 28, 2018 8:47 pm 
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Agreed that just the facet pattern itself does not save weight. Your "Native Cut" is not representative of the proportions that are usually cut in traditional makes.

Material saved in :

the hand preforming

The differences in how the facets are just layed on the stone by following the preform contours.

the culet will usually have a keel rather than coming to a point

the pavilion will usually have an optimized bulge. Your Omni cut in the example maintains the bulge on the sides giving it a big weight advantage over the "Native" as drawn. If the native carried the same bulge as the omni, but preserved it all around so that it had a keel rather than a point, then it would have the weight advantage.

Depending on the preform the crown will often be flatter, the pavilion deeper

As I have said this likely produces a stone that is less optimized for brilliance, but does a great job with color, clarity, shape. Whether this compromises beauty is open for personal choice. But the general market rewards the weight retention over the compromises. This is not to say that a market that appreciates the more brilliant cannot be developed by a dealer. It surely can. Also, I think in the examples shown, both stones would be acceptable in any market based on shape, and cutting style. It is stones with shapes like the one in your Avatar that would meet with resistance in the traditional precious stone market.


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 Post subject: Re: How do you find the center of rough to attach the dop?
PostPosted: Thu Nov 29, 2018 10:04 am 
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I do find slight weight differences to be meaningless for the most part. Selling gemstones is not like selling gas, where there is a set price per gallon. So for a stone of a given color and other attributes, there may be a price range of say $1000 - $1500 per ct. And then this could be the wholesale price. If you are selling both wholesale and retail to different types of clients, your selling price of the stone could vary even more.
My customers come to me for the more unique cuts. If I replicated native cutting, I fear I would loose most of my customers.

Maybe you assessment of what is acceptable in the market is for stones over $50,000. I rarely sell stones over $20,000 and assume most cutters in the USA are selling stones under $2000, but are selling because of the cutting being different than what is commonly available.

For me, time is a big consideration, and in the time it would take to make that beautiful preform, I would have the pavilion cut and the stone in the transfer fixture.

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 Post subject: Re: How do you find the center of rough to attach the dop?
PostPosted: Thu Nov 29, 2018 5:03 pm 
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Precision Gem wrote:
My customers come to me for the more unique cuts. If I replicated native cutting, I fear I would loose most of my customers.

For me, time is a big consideration, and in the time it would take to make that beautiful preform, I would have the pavilion cut and the stone in the transfer fixture.



I respect that if you have developed a market that buys from you because of your cutting style, then that is absolutely the way you should cut stones. Don't misunderstand, I love the "precision" cut stones myself, and cut that way frequently myself with certain stones and varieties. I also believe that you can cut this style stone with excellent results in both yield and performance if the rough is right. If that is your market you probably carefully select your rough to optimize the results. You are very experienced in cutting natural rough. I am also guessing that the rough is determining how you cut a stone, not the desire to try a new pattern from a diagram. If so, you are by all definitions a gem cutter, not primarily a faceter.

Not sure about the time thing though. It takes only a couple of minutes to preform a stone. This time is usually made up by having less stone to remove when putting the facets.


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