The beauty of a jewel, shining in the velvet cushion in a jewelry store, it seems to us something immutable: subtly shimmering in his golden or silver frame, playing with all the colors of the rainbow in the sun or light an electric bulb, it seems to us a wonderful guest, graced the ceremonial splendor our gray and transitory world. But the real story of any gem like a Cinderella story: often would not recognize this gorgeous, glowing crystal in the nondescript block of indeterminate color extracted from the bowels of the earth miner. The path that will take the mineral ore before it becomes an ornament for another charmer, long and heavy – in fact the natural faces of precious stones are rarely perfect, and only hard work jeweler-graver can unleash their charm.
Processing, which are all gems, called the cut, and is cutting off the unwanted particles from the stone and give it a definite shape with a certain number of faces (or facets, bevelling). It is through cutting color, luster, bicolor or luminescence effects are revealed in full, and defects, turbidity, cracks on the contrary completely disappear or become invisible. The form is chosen at random, not cut – for every kind of minerals are the most profitable in the decorative sense of the kinds of cuts, which are
The very first type of cut, which learned of humanity, becoming cabochon – in ancient times gems treatment was fairly primitive, and the stone just cut off all unnecessary, giving it a rounded shape similar to the
. Cabochons are not out of fashion today, but in our time as granite only the opaque and translucent semi-precious stones (such as turquoise, malachite, rose quartz, Charoite), because the light penetrate the gem can not, and the best option – force him to reflect on the surface. Some special effects – star, irisation, opalescence – best seen when the stone is faceted cabochon, so it seems that a ruby or sapphire (they often have asterism) poured six-rayed star. The most common simple cabochons with a flat base and convex top surface. In addition, there are double cabochons, where the lower bound is also slightly arched in the opposite direction from the upper side and a convex-concave cabochons, in which the lower base is curved in the same direction as the upper surface, making the stone likeness of the lens. More information about body jewelry you can find on www.qpiercing.com!Not to be confused with cabochons gems – semi precious stones plates on which was carved by a specific volume plot. When the picture is convex and protrudes from the surface like a stone, a product called Cameo, recessed into the stone image is called intaglio. Glyptics usually applied to the multi-colored gems – chalcedony, yashmam, agate.
Transparent gems, regardless of the values accepted facet of the various facets geometrically correct shape to be plotted in a certain proportion. For the first time this type of cut was opened by jewelers in ancient India, where precious stones are basic values and love for him was enormous. Then the pieces of stone, regardless of the size covered by a large number of small faces, often asymmetrically located – it was a prototype faceted cut, where the shape of the mineral produced from a set of planar polygons.
Later, there were more advanced types of faceted cuts – one of the most interesting, but not used today, was a rose, that is, cut, consisting of a flat base of the lower base like cabochons, and faceted top, on which all the facets of
Stepped or polirnaya cut, which was formerly called