I bought this stone about 6 months ago from the main dealer i use in Kenya. It's a color change garnet from the Taita-Taveta area in Kenya. Many of the color change stones from this area have a poor color change, and go from a peachy purple to a brown color. This one was very special, and turns from a purple to a teal blue/green. In incandescent it's a purple with blue flashes, under daylight it goes to a teal blue, and in florescent a teal green color. It is a dark stone, it always seems the best color change is with the darker stones. This garnet does show it's best brilliance in daylight and florescent. This was really hard to try to photograph, as my normal lighting set up is Solux bulbs that are a warm daylight. So this first image does have a lot more blue in it, than you would see with pure incandescent. The next images is florescent light. It's one of the stones you really need to see in person, and is best geared for a collector of very rare stones. The cut is my Star 80 design.

Tags: Color Change Garnet

I haven't cut a Mali Garnet in about a year. Last year they were pretty popular, and I cut about 5 or 6, and they all went very fast. This one is a bit larger than those last year, as it's 2.10 ct with very nice crystal and loop clean. The image doesn't show the dispersion, in real life the stone displays very high dispersion. The dispersion on a Mali garnet is very strong (0.057) which is even higher than a diamond (0.044). Compare this to a spessartite garnet which is still high, but only 0.024 to 0.027

Tags: Mali Garnet

The past few months some very nice Rubellite has been coming out of Nigeria again. These stones are all natural, no heat or other treatment, with a strong color that holds true in any light.
This round is 1.84 cts.

Tags: Rubellite Tourmaline

The stone is now finished, and you follow the cutting at the link below or clicking on the picture.

LINK TO CUTTING

Don't want to spoil the results here, so this is a picture of the crown being cut.

Tags: Pink Tourmaline

I started cutting a stone for a client, and thought I would photo document the cutting along the way together with some descriptions of what is going on.

Click on this LINK to go to the page showing the cutting process. The stone is a pink tourmaline, being cut into a square step. As many of you know, I really don't like cutting this design, so I thought maybe breaking up the cutting with the pictures would help get my mind of the fact that I'm not having that much fun cutting the stone. The finished stones always look terrific after being cut, and always sell well, I just don't find them fun to cut.

Tags: Step cut