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Guess what?

  • Thread starter Shiny Black Cat
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stracci2000

Ideal_Rock
Premium
Joined
Jun 26, 2007
Messages
8,425
It's a pretty ring!
I know you want it to be alexandrite.
But whatever the stone is, I highly doubt that it is natural alexandrite, but rather a synthetic stone.
I say that because of the poor faceting, which I have circled below. A natural stone with such strong color change would have been cut much more carefully.
IMG_20220904_215525_HDR~2.jpg
Color change stones, whether natural or synthetic are really so much fun! I hope you enjoy this one, regardless!
 
S

Shiny Black Cat

Guest
It's a pretty ring!
I know you want it to be alexandrite.
But whatever the stone is, I highly doubt that it is natural alexandrite, but rather a synthetic stone.
I say that because of the poor faceting, which I have circled below. A natural stone with such strong color change would have been cut much more carefully.
IMG_20220904_215525_HDR~2.jpg
Color change stones, whether natural or synthetic are really so much fun! I hope you enjoy this one, regardless!

wrong this time my guess was Sultanite
 

PrecisionGem

Ideal_Rock
Trade
Joined
Jul 27, 2004
Messages
2,030
It's a pretty ring!
I know you want it to be alexandrite.
But whatever the stone is, I highly doubt that it is natural alexandrite, but rather a synthetic stone.
I say that because of the poor faceting, which I have circled below. A natural stone with such strong color change would have been cut much more carefully.
IMG_20220904_215525_HDR~2.jpg
Color change stones, whether natural or synthetic are really so much fun! I hope you enjoy this one, regardless!

This post brings some interesting topics for discussion.

As I have said several times in the past, cutting a gem is usually deciding on certain compromises. Cut for color, cut for face up size, cut for weight, cut for symmetry, cut for a popular shape, cut for performance, cut for dispersion. Normally you can not achieve all of these, so you need to decide which one, or ones you think are most valuable for the piece of rough.

For Alexandrite, weight and orientation for color are most often chosen. So you very often you will find very poorly cut alexandrite, as they are often cut near the mine location (native cut) and almost always cut to preserve as much weight as possible.

This stone, I think from the photo's looks to be pretty well cut, so that would make me question if it would be alexandrite.

As far as the table facet coming up a little short of a tight meet with the other facets, here's some thoughts on that.

1. Most stones that need some fixing up after a lot of wear, typically have scratches on the table, or some abrading right at the junction of the table and the next tier of facets. So a table that is a little undercut can really work out nice when it's time for a clean up on the stone. The re-cutter just needs to bring the table down a little to clean things up, and there is room for that.

2. Compromises come not only to the cutter but to the buyer. If a stone weighed 3.001 cts with the table slightly undercut, would you prefer the table cut to the meet, if the stone went under 4 cts. to say 2.952 ?

3. In normal viewing with the naked eye, this is most likely something you would never see.
 
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