Guest Designers Online Faceting Designs & Diagrams: Celtic Cross


A facet design created by a guest designer Dave Dening. This design is called the "Celtic Cross" which was made as memento for his wife and sister-in-law.

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Celtic Cross by Dave Dening

Note: This is this is the very first design from a "Guest Designer" that I am posting in this new section. Dave was kind enough to give his "Celtic Cross" design to the faceting community. I am sure he would be glad to hear from anybody that cuts his design. Thanks for getting us started with such a nice design Dave…. Jeff

Celtic Cross cut in Chrysoberyl Spinel by Dave Denning

Dave Dening - Cutting Remarks

The "Celtic Cross" design was created as a memento for my wife and sister-in-law on our vacation to Ireland. The early Irish churches combined the cross and a circle representing the sun into the high crosses seen scattered around the country. I was looking for a representative symbol to incorporate into our "trip stone" design.

The photo shows a 20mm (30carat) example cut from some of Jeff Graham's yellow/green synthetic Chrysoberyl colored Spinel.

The large stone brings out a nice mint green shade. The frosted facets highlight the "Celtic Cross". When cutting the crown cut CF1 all the way around to set the girdle width (i.e. 96, 6, 12, 18, 24 etc.), then re-cut the other facets in the tier using the initial CF1 cut as a guide. The instructions for CF8 are a bit unorthodox. A depth indicator is needed to set the width for the "ring" composed of the CF5, CF6, and CF7 facets. You can eye-ball the CF8 cutting depth, or, I found that the depth for the first CF8 facet can be determined by where the first CF8 facet meets the CF5 and CF6 facets on the other side of the stone.

Note: Cutting the first CF8 facet destroys the meets for the remaining facets in the tier so you will have to cut the last three CF8 facets to the depth/stop determined by the first.

Dave Dening
Email: DDENING@rfmd (just type in the .com, this keeps bots from spamming the address)


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Detailed faceting instructions by Jeff Graham available at The Rock Peddler


Jeff R. Graham

The late Jeff Graham was a prolific faceter, creator of many original faceting designs, and the author of several highly-regarded instructional faceting books such as Gram Faceting Designs.

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