Faceting amethyst is a rewarding focus for gemstone enthusiasts, especially as a renaissance in jewelry and lapidary work is taking place in the lapidary arts. This classic round brilliant by Jim Perkins is a perfect start for beginning faceters and a must-cut for experienced faceters as well.
The Perfect 640: A Faceting Amethyst Design
Jim Perkins authored his first gemstone design book for faceting quartz gemstones in 2006, Designed for Quartz -A Book of Faceting Designs. This is one of the first books I used to learn how to facet. The book is available at Kingsleynorth.com, along with sixteen additional faceting design books by Mr. Perkins. I recommend this book, along with The Garnet Study and Designed for Sapphires, to my new faceting students. Although these three books have some similar designs, Jim provided the proper angles for the refractive indices for each of these three types of jewels. In my opinion, Jim worked more on gemstone performance, brightness, scintillation, and dispersion than he did on original shapes and patterns. This is where his genius was best shown and proven.
I have selected Jim’s quartz design, “The Perfect 640,” from his book, From One Quartz Cutter to Another. In this design, Jim wonderfully demonstrated the balancing of the performance parameters of quartz. There are many brighter and sparkling stone diagrams in this book, but this one shows off the true and balanced capability of quartz as a jewel.
Choosing the Right Amethyst for Faceting
I chose Bolivian amethyst from the Anahi mine for my gemstone material. To me, the amethyst from this mine has a purple color that is a perfect blend of red and blue without favoring one color over another. The saturation of Anahi amethyst is not very dark, but it still has a richness of royalty to it.
Tools and Techniques for Faceting Amethyst
I used a ULTRA TEC V5 faceting machine to facet the amethyst. I preformed the rough amethyst on my Diamond Pacific Genie cabbing machine, dopped the preform with Loctite 404, and went through a series of laps, including a worn-out 100-grit TopCutter, 250-and 500-grit Hyper-Edges, Gearloose Twister and a Turbofan AG-8 cerium lap.
Gemstone Description
Stone: Amethyst
Origin: Bolivia
Treatment: None
Carat: 12.7
Size: 15.5 * 11.5 mm
Grade: Loupe Clean
Design: The Perfect 640
Designer: Jim Perkins
Faceted by: Mark Oros
Studio: Hashnu Stones & Gems LLC
Price:$508
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This Faceting Focus column about faceting amethyst previously appeared in Rock & Gem magazine. Click here to subscribe. Column by Mark Oros.
