By Duncan Miller

Here is a quick and easy oval with a standard 1:1.30 proportion. It has a fully conical pavilion, so you can spin a conical preform, stopping just short of producing a point. This means you don’t have to change angles and mast height when cutting the sixteen pavilion facets, which saves time and avoids mistakes. This is a fully meet-point design that doesn’t require a preform, so it would be good for a beginner’s first oval. It doesn’t work well in quartz or beryl, so chose a suitable material with a higher refractive index, like corundum, garnet or zircon.