depth of gemstones

[flutterby]

I am going to my jeweler tomorrow as my ruby will back from the lab with certs. I dont know why I am terribly nervous. Anyway, the size of the stone was approximately 9x7x4, I dont remember exactly. I do remember thinking that it was somewhat shallow. But i dont know exactly what that means. Anyone have any info for me regarding how deep or shallow the stone should be, and I had heard something about windows, what are those?

Any help will be great, I want to make the most educated decision, even though I do love this stone.
Thanks!

 

[valeria101]

When are gems shallow...

I would describe that in two steps: if they have awindow AND cannot be recut so as to remedy it ! Both parts of the statement are needed (hence the ''AND''). Because gems can be very deep cut and still have windows...

A pretty good description of what a window is comes fro Pala Gems (palagemsn.com) in their tutorial on gemstones cut. There have been a couple of posts about it around here too.

Hope some of this helps

 

[movie zombie]

try: http://palagems.com/quality_4cs.htm#cut

has good description w/pictures.

peace, movie zombie

 

[Michael_E]

msflutter,
Stone depths are far less important in ruby than in many other colored stones. The reason being that an adequate depth and reasonable cut are just fine as long as the color is very fine. In the case of your ruby the depth percentage is about 57% which is fine. It may still be cut with a bit of a belly, causing a small window in the stone.Windowing in this case is expected and not anything to reject the stone over. Since cutting it for maximum brightness could reduce it''s weight and therefore value. My advice is don''t worry about it, if the stone is singing your song, buy it!

 

[bar01]

The 60-80% range is what I have always read.

I try to stay as close to the lower end of that range as possible to maximize face up size - i.e you pay by ct - so why waste it in the depth?