The beauty and fun of faceting quartz gemstones was highlighted by Mark Oros, of Hashnu Stones, at Tucson’s gem and mineral shows in 2025 with a display of quartz gemstones, including citrine and amethyst, cut to maximize scintillation and reflect light. Watch the video or read the text below of this fascinating interview with Mark.
Faceting Quartz Gemstones
DAVID: Mark, it’s good to see you, man! Good to see you! This is Mark Oros of Hashu Gems. He is absolutely one of my mentors. I don’t ever think I’ll get to where he is. Mark has been cutting for a long time. He famously has every device that ULTRA TEC makes. He’s like a wizard. I would say he’s got a little bit of a wizard energy about him with what he does with gemstones and the results that he gets.
If you could come in here (with the camera) for a second, we could start talking to him about some of these gems (in the display case). You can see that there are a number of quartzes, like a theme. There’s quartz and citrine and amethyst. The cuts that he does. He designs his own cuts. He finds this big, amazing, clear quartz. He’s going to be doing a lecture on a one-year quartz challenge; he’s been on a quartz kick, which some people complain about (polishing), but you seem to have no trouble with polishing.
DAVID: So, first of all, what’s with the quartz? What’s the idea?
MARK: The idea here was to try to get more scintillation out of quartz, to make larger gemstones that would give me a larger canvas so I could do more intricate designs. I have a Fantasy Machine by ULTRA TEC and I’ve been using that to actually cut into the back of the gemstones, give me fantasy cuts, and produce designs and produce scintillation into these quartz.
DAVID: Scintillation is basically the amount of flash?
MARK: Yep, and also dispersion. I’ve been getting a lot more dispersion out of them, and that is the different colors coming out of the gemstone.
DAVID: What he’s talking about is the light performance. So, how much light’s going in, and then how much is coming when cut correctly?
MARK: We can get about 80 percent of the light that goes into the gemstone, we can get to come out. That’s where the magic happens.
DAVID: So let’s go into some of these. I want to start at the top with this. I’m not quite sure what to call it, I mean, it’s a ball, but it’s a bit geodesic.
Quartz Gemstones: Faceting Citrine Using Trillion Stars Design
MARK: Yeah, it’s called ‘Trillion Stars.’ I wanted to do a sphere that was a little different. That’s a really beautiful piece of natural citrine that I got from Africa. We cut it and polished it, and it is more geometric as you said, and what we did do with that is we did outline frosted the apexes of the facets, and that was done with the ULTRA TEC V5 machine. We polished it, and then we went back in and got the apexes of those just slightly frosted. The machine then delineates and makes those facets pop out, and just be very much.
DAVID: It looks very futuristic. Your style is to me a little bit Star Trek futuristic, you know, very very modern, and then it looks like you might have done the same thing on this citrine.
MARK: Yes. That’s a citrine. That design was by Jim Perkins, one of my favorite designs. That is used as a 72 index; normally, you use a 96 index. A 72 index is very nice because you get odds and evens – 9s and 18s on top of each other makes for very nice scintillation. Again, we did put those frosts on, and the nice thing about the ULTRA TEC V5 is you can buy a series of different indexes so you can get different symmetries.
DAVID: The index is the wheel that we’re doing all the numbers around the circle.
MARK: Yes, that’s correct.
Quartz Gemstones: Faceting Amethyst with Cleopatra’s Eye Design
DAVID: That’s really awesome! Now let’s go down here to this amethyst. This is a – it says Cleopatra’s eye. Is that just the standard or did you go a little bit beyond?
MARK: So that’s Bob Keller’s design for Cleopatra’s eye – one of my favorite gemstone designs to cut. And again, we used the ULTRA TEC Fantasy machine to put in cuts into the back, and we also pre-rotate it in there and put circles in it. It was a lot of fun, and I think it gave it some real depth to the gemstone.
DAVID: And again, really modern, to my eye.
MARK: Thank you.
DAVID: And then the circles, did you do that with like the Rotator adapter or what was your function?
MARK: Yes. So ULTRA TEC has recently come out with a rotator tool, and that allows, if you lock out the index, that allows the spindle to spin, and I can get very nice circles; very, very precise circles put into the bottom of the gemstone. We also did that with this one here.
DAVID: And look at the ring of this. Can you get in closer and see these stones? I mean, this is just mindblowing. So this series of small circles, tell me about those.
MARK: It’s one of the reasons I do large quartzes, because it gives me a larger canvas to do designs onto the gemstone. And this one is a design by Phan Trung, but I took it a little farther by adding these concaves with the ULTRA TEC Fantasy machine, and it allowed me to create these designs and patterns that then come out and be beautiful.
DAVID: So you have it in the V5, and then when you want to go put these different cuts on the backside, which you’re calling fantasy cuts or concave cuts, you move the stone, or how do you move it to the Fantasy machine?
MARK: So in the Fantasy machine, I have another mast on there, so I have a mast on both machines. I then take out the stone and the dop. I place it in the other V5 mast. And then I start to have some magic done with the Fantasy Machine, where I start to put the concaves in, and I like to kind of follow the pattern of the actual design of the gemstone, but sometimes I just get a little crazy and have some fun. With this one, you can see I started to concave the cullet. I put in the circles, and what’s nice about that is the high crown of this gemstone reflects this, and so it only has one circle in it, but you see it many times.
DAVID: That’s so awesome. So this one down here has the same pattern, or I’m seeing the same pattern on it.
MARK: Yes, that one has a very similar pattern.
DAVID: On the back side, but how many is that? You know, with faceting, you could put one mark and it’ll show up 16 times. So, without me being able to get behind the barrier, how many actual cuts are on the backside, but then I’m seeing those little circles?
MARK: You’re probably seeing a couple circles, some slices, a dimple in the cullet, and I’d say there’s probably 60 to 70 fantasy cuts on the back of that.
DAVID: Wow, wow, so very time-consuming!
MARK: Yes. The stone right now that we’re looking at, I would say, probably took me 18 hours to cut.
DAVID: Wow, Mark! These are absolutely fantastic cuts, and I’m just so thankful to be able to hang out with you a little bit during this 70th annual Tucson Gem & Mineral Show. One of the things we were talking about earlier, and one of the things I know about you, partly from your Instagram, where you show these, is that these are a drop in the bucket. From your Instagram, you teach, but you don’t just teach a kind of passing lesson; you really set people up to not only know how to facet, but how to do the business and how to analyze the rough, and you really set them up for success.
ULTRA TEC Machines
DAVID: So, first of all, my first question is ULTRA TEC. Of course, you know it’s the best machine made – everybody recognizes that – but why would you recommend an ULTRA TEC to a student that’s just getting started, versus maybe an old jalopy, you know, used machine?
MARK: Well, there are many reasons for that. First of all, I believe that they’re a good investment. I learned on a 1982 ULTRA TEC machine, so my machine was over 40 years old when I started to learn on it, and it was still cutting a beautiful stone. I then moved to the newer machines, which really gave me the ability to create my art, and I sell the ULTRA TEC machines to my students for really one reason. Our philosophy is that their success is our success, so I need to set them up with a machine that is going to make them successful.
Now, the really nice thing about the ULTRA TEC machine is the accuracy and also the repeatability. When a student starts, they need to build some confidence in what they’re doing and cutting the stone, and this machine allows them to progress quickly and repeat their success over and over and over again. They’re fantastic. And the other reason is the customer support that ULTRA TEC provides. They stand behind their machine. It’s an amazing warranty that they have on that, and when they get the machine, they call me for questions, but they can call ULTRA TEC anytime and get support from them. I’ve never seen a company that provides better customer support than ULTRA TEC.
DAVID: Now you also teach on the Fantasy machine, isn’t that right?
MARK: Yes, I do. So we do a flat faceting four-day class. We also do a two-day Fantasy machine, and I have to say the Fantasy classes are my favorite because that allows the student to use the machine and become very creative. The Fantasy machine, I don’t think I’ve even tapped the amount of creativity that I can produce out of that machine. I can’t wait to get home and start cutting again on that Fantasy machine. I’ve gotten tons of ideas while I’m here, and if I could go home tomorrow and start cutting, I would.
DAVID: So you can set up the students with a V5, a Fantasy machine, and a great syllabus that leads to their success. I can echo what you were saying that I’ve known people that have used a cheap imported machine or an old hand-me-down machine, and they sometimes, not always, but sometimes thought I just don’t like faceting this, this isn’t that fun. For all those of us who are old enough to have had an old car and then buy their first new car, that’s kind of the feeling that I got. I remember getting my very first new car, it was the year 2000. It had air conditioning, and that was kind of a new thing for me. That’s the same feeling (for me) because I learned on an old machine at a club, and when I got that digital machine in, I was just blown away by just that you don’t have to look at every little thing.
MARK: Yeah, and that’s really one of the nice things about the ULTRA TEC machine is it does have the digital angle display, which you don’t find on other machines, and that gives you the ability to see your angle quickly, respond quickly. What we do is we give the lesson, and then we help them pick out the right machine for them. They have the V5, the VL, the Glass Tec, and the Fantasy machine. We help them choose them, we help them pick out the right laps, which ULTRA TEC sells, and they have a series of tools that you can add to your machine so that you can actually start to cut stones like this fairly quickly
DAVID: The Glass Tec is the 12-inch lap as opposed to the others that have an 8-inch, so we’re talking about faceting. Now, do you facet some of your gemstones on the glass tag?
MARK: Yes. I do.
DAVID: Show me just with your hands.
MARK: I’ve done a piece of obsidian about this big.
DAVID: So that’s a pomelo!
MARK: Yes, and we’ve done that on the Glass Tec because it gives us the ability to have the bigger lap. Again, the accuracy is unbelievable. The repeatability is there. You can facet on any of the ULTRA TEC machines and show the stones from any of them to a jeweler, and they can’t tell the difference; each of the machines creates a precision gemstone.
DAVID: And then the VL is more of a kind of an econo model, it’s designed to be a little bit less expensive for folks to get into it.
MARK: It’s a little less expensive. We have one of them at our studio so that we can teach on it, and it’s a good entry-level machine. It again facets as well as the V5, but for folks that are trying to conserve a little bit of money to get into this hobby or business, it’s a perfect machine to start.
DAVID: And now the VL can be used with the Fantasy machine, that’s a new technological development.
MARK: Yes.
DAVID: All right, now I’ve got to ask the big question: glue or wax?
MARK: Both!
DAVID: He’s treading the middle of the road right here.
MARK: Whatever works is good! I go more toward the glue side, but I have to really appreciate the people that have mastered the wax; that’s an art.
DAVID: And for hundreds of years! So Mark Oros of HASHNU Gems, check out his Instagram, and if you need a machine or if you need a great lesson, hit him up. He’s in upstate New York. Thanks a million, Mark! I appreciate talking to you.
MARK: Thank you for the compliments! Have a good day.
DAVID: Take it easy.
Mastering Quartz Gemstones through Faceting: Final Thoughts
Faceting quartz gemstones is both an art and a science, combining precise machinery and creative design. Mastering faceting quartz gemstones enhances your lapidary skills and yields beautiful, wearable art.
This story about faceting quartz gemstones was produced for Rock & Gem magazine. Click here to subscribe.
