Stripes and Blades: Guest Designers, Online Faceting Designs and Diagrams

You can find cutting instructions for Stripes and Blades here.

Inspiration

(Note: Some of you may notice some similarity between Daniel's design and Jeff Graham's "Mirage" designs. Daniel cut some of them and liked them, so he was inspired to create his "Stripes and Blades" design. "Mirage" designs create illusions of facets in finished gems from reflections. See Jeff Graham's Additions #9 and #10 faceting design books).

I've been puttering around trying to learn GemCad. I couldn't sleep one night, and Jeff's advice to me to "Think outside the box!" kept ringing in my mind.

How could I make a square (or mostly square) design that hadn't already been done? And how to make it easy to cut? Well, here's my first solution. It's a bit unusual, but I hope you all enjoy it.

Cutting Remarks

This is an easy design to cut, as long as you can get the crown spiral set correctly. Any error in the spiral may be magnified when cutting the stripes (or chevrons).

Cut the stripes the same way you cut C1 and C2 to establish the girdle. Also, the stripes almost require that the stone be fairly large. Otherwise, they may tend to become too thin.

Cut and polish the table before C10. Then, you can polish C10 to meet the table corners.

Be careful about trying to lengthen your finished C10 facets. If you adjust C10 much above 18°, you could adversely affect the stone's brightness.

Detailed faceting instructions by Jeff Graham available at The Rock Peddler