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FACETIPS – A GEM CUTTER’S NOTEBOOK

by
Duncan Miller


The faceting articles published over the past few years in the Mineral Chatter have been compiled into a single 128 page document, available for download for those interested in saving all the articles together. To download the pdf file click here.

A 29,18 ct cuprite from Onganja, Namibia, cut by Duncan Miller and now in a private collection in Germany.


Browsing Archive: June, 2019

Southern African Lapidary Stones to watch out for: Botswana Agates

Posted by Site Moderator Webmaster on Tuesday, June 25, 2019, In : Lapidary 


Willie Visser has had this Botswana agate for a number of years. Recently he decided it was time that he took the plunge to cut it, and he was amazed to find it was the most beautiful agate he had ever owned. He has called it “The Mona Visa”.

By coincidence it is exactly 10 years since he cut open another special agate and found a fish.
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Zultanite - A relatively new gemstone from Turkey

Posted by Site Moderator Webmaster on Monday, June 24, 2019, In : Mineralogy 

By Peter Rosewarne

My wife and I recently visited Istanbul for a few days on our way to Venice and beyond. An 11-hour non-stop flight on Turkish Airways from Cape Town International Airport got us there. Impressions of Istanbul were favourable; interesting, friendly, good food, clean and safe. We stayed in the Old City and did a lot of walking and had an obligatory tourist boat ride along the Bosphorus (East meets West). We visited the Grand Bazaar, the largest covered bazaar in the World with...

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Tanzanite

Posted by Site Moderator Webmaster on Monday, June 24, 2019, In : Faceting 
Duncan Miller

A tanzanite was re-cut last month by Duncan. The original stone was very lop-sided, with a shallow pavilion on one side, so there was considerable weight loss. The girdle is deliberately thick to retain weight and keep the finished stone over 5 ct.

 
14,6 × 11,1 × 7,3 mm; 8,67 ct before re-cutting



12,5 × 10,5 × 6,7 mm; 5,39 ct after re-cutting


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HYBRID DOPPING WITH WAX AND CYANOACRYLATE GLUE

Posted by Site Moderator Webmaster on Monday, June 24, 2019, In : Faceting 

Duncan Miller

Initial dopping requires a flat surface on your rough. Prepare a flat dop with a blob of hot wax on it and in the transfer fixture push this against another flat dop face to form a layer of wax a few millimetres thick. You can build this up with several layers if the stone you are going to cut is very heat sensitive. Clean the flat on your rough with alcohol. When the wax is cold, apply a small drop of cyanoacrylate glue (CA), position the rough on the dop quickly, and let the gl...


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Ye Olde English Spar Boxes – a Hobby Revived!

Posted by Site Moderator Webmaster on Monday, June 24, 2019, In : Mineralogy 
Lesley Andrews

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries a popular pastime among the mining population of Northern England was the construction of spar boxes. These were used to decorate their homes, and also to sell to make some extra money. Spar boxes were made up of various crystals (spar is the old name for a crystalline mineral) which were collected by the miners working in the lead and iron mines of the north Pennines and Lakeland areas.

My first encounter with spar boxes in 200...


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