One of the enjoyable aspects of concave cutting is that you do not follow a set gem stone design recipe. This is very helpful because I only cut natural untreated material. Natural material with its imperfection as jardin, inclusions, haze and so on will cause design changes. When working with natural material you learn to improvise your design as the imperfection arise. Concave cutting gives the cutter more design options then using flat faceting. Therefore, it is far more flexible to alter the stones symmetry, critical angle and still maintain a stone that is pleasing to the eye. I have 3 examples of similar light aquamarine from the Tripp mine. The basic design shape for all 3 is a pare.
#1. This stone had a deep inclusion that at first did not look that deep. Therefore, that is why the symmetry is different. When I mount this stone, I will place an accent stone in the area.
#2. To clean out some jardin around the girdle I added some barium type cuts
#3. Is more traditional because I didn’t have to do much improvising.
So the bottom line: I was able to maintain larger & cleaner stones that are different & a lot more fun to cut.
That’s it for now.
Stone #1, outlined area shows larger concave facetStone#2, outlined area shows added barium pavilion concave facets
#2 stone, outlined area shows larger concave facet#3 stone, outlined area showing better Symmetry #3 stone, outlined area shows Symmetry
#3 stone, outlined area shows better symmetry