1210 Oval

Design by Jeff Ford

Master stone for 2006 USFG competition

I cut this stone in a light lavender CZ, it is a Masters cut but as always to cut for competition you have to get the fundamentals right. The most important part of this cut is P1, if you miss perfect center point you will have problems from start to finish.

There are several ways to cut this stone, here is how I did it.

I spent a little extra time on P1, actually I cut the pavilion as two parts. I started with a 360 and roughed the stone out like this, I cut P1 and then used G 2 to set my length at 13 mm and G 5 to 11 mm. Now put a 600 on and repeat the above only now just cut G 2 down to 12.4. Start with P 2, chain P 3, P 4, P 5. Go back and cut G 3, G 4, G 5. Using your L/W check to see how it worked out. Mine came out 1/2 of a tenth mm off but within limits. I then went back and cut the above procedure with my 1200 (this is where you must get P1 right) and cut 12.05 mm on G 2. When I finished up my Barion and girdle my stone came out 12.05X10.

I now polished the girdle. To me this was part one and the most important as just being off very little will mess up the crown. I didn't want to start over and I had a fresh 1200 so I just left it on to cut the rest of the facets, I cut P 6 like this 96-48 24-72 to make a point and then cut 12-60 and 36-84. Now I cut P 9 and then cut in P 7 and P 8. I polished starting with the Barion and then the same order as pre-polish. The numbers worked out very well and I had very little tweaking to do on polish but some. I transferred the stone and cut A, B, C, D, all four of each, I had to move my cheater ¼ a number, very small correction and it came together nicely, all this with a 600 and I left the girdle at 1/8 inch.

I cut the rest of the facets with the 600 and then cut the table in to just touch the top of the mains. I went back and did it all over again with 1200. This time I over cut the table slightly and polished it. Then I started at the break facets and polished up to the table using my stars to put all meets in. I polished with 50,000 on Batt, although the meets came out very good I would not send this stone for competition, I would have used 100,000 on ceramic as a pre polish and 200,000 as a final polish. Also I would have spent four days on the stone not the eight hours it took to test cut it.

Art Kavan