I am just getting into faceting, and have no idea what sort of machine to get? Any helpful suggestions?
I already have enough gem grade rough from my rock hounding hobby. Mostly tourmaline and morganite.
thanks in Advance…
No one can advise a machine?..please help…
Wish I could help you, but I’ve never done any cutting myself. Looking at the rest of the website, there’s a lot of articles about faceting and getting started. I didn’t see any straight buy this and not that machine, but lots of good information. A book that should be good is: FACETING for AMATEURS by Glenn & Martha Vargas.
If you can swing the gold membership price, it’s well worth it. And no, I’m not an employee, just another gold member.
Duane
Thank the gods, there is someone here alive. I am thinking the lack of response is to my name, but its tied to my Instagram acct. Thank you so much Duane. I will do that once funds become avail.
I was rock hounding with a friend of mine and came upon some silver ore that is about 36% pure…so if we can get a claim, just might be able to afford the membership and a bit more.
So what do you do? Rock hound? Gold Hunter?
Hope the claim works out.
I started 4 years ago repairing my wife’s jewelry and quickly moved into beading. I got bored with that found gemstones. Currently I’m learning as much as I can about gemstones and silversmithing. Hopefully I can take my gemologist test this coming year.
cool…if you lived in vegas, I got a few stuff that needs identification…such as what I suspect is beryl…one possible morganite, and a few unknowns…
Seems NV, especialy henderson-nv has some lovely stuff in the mountains here. Alot of water related minerals.
Was talking to an old timer here to claims there is topaz here. He gave me some leads…in process of following up…
good luck in your test
I live in Pennsylvania. To confirm your stones cheaply, you can test for specific gravity. It won’t totally identify them, but can narrow your list of possibles. You’ll need the host rock removed and a digital scale.
You may want to check with some of your local rock shops for used equipment, or some may even offer classes for cutting.
Well the thing is its a matrix sort of mix of stuff…so blue beryl possibly with schorl and brown matrix…
Yea classes are offered but its while I’m working…and work comes before all else…
I do have digital scale…any head shop has those…need to careful when i remove though.
Hello,
Asking which machine to get is like asking a group of car enthusiasts “which car should I buy”?
TONS of answers, and usually starts brand loyalty in-fighting. All depends on your budget, and truthfully a good stone can be cut by a good faceter on any machine.
First thing you should do is find the yahoo newsgroup United States Faceters Guild and subscribe to the digest. Lots of people there who will answer these sorts of questions almost immediately and TONS of old archives to read through.
Also there is a brand new cheap and EXTENSIVE faceting book that just came out by Tom Herbst. Shockingly cheap for what you get. Almost everything that you need to know.
Look here: http://facetingbook.com/
Buy it on Amazon–thank me later 
dd