How do worn facet meets on an old stone affect its performance?

[beaujolais]

How do worn facet meets on an old stone affect its performance? (Or, does it?) Does it make it more prone to more wear and chips?

Thanks.

 

[yssie]

This will be good!

Can I take a guess? The mass of minute chips must have some (negative) impact on the alignment/presence of the virtual facets. Maybe they're fewer in number, depending on location of wear... or maybe since the worn edges effectively reduce the reflecting/refracting area the VF patterns become like those of a smaller diamond with the same number of facets? Anyone got any good reading material on this?

There must also be concerns about dirt collecting like with a poorly bruted girdle.

Disclaimer: I could be very wrong. I'm interested to find out just how

 

[beaujolais]

No one else? Please?

Stormy?

 

[kenny]

I'll think out loud.

It would take a HUGE number of tiny chips at facet interfaces to remove 1% of the area of even one facet.
Even if every facet's area was reduced by 1% I'd predict a 1% reduction of light return.

I doubt, short of letting your diamond tumble down a 3000 mile long river, you'd ever see a diamond that was this worn down.

IOW, I doubt normal wear and tear reduces light performance enough to be noticeable to the human eye.

But like RD says, I'm just the blind leading the blind.

 

[beaujolais]

Thanks for the thoughts Ken & Yssie. Seems like once a topic gets a few posts it's more likely to take off. I appreciate it.

I'd love to hear from Storm about if it affects virtual facets.

Thanks again.

 

[Karl_K]

I was hoping one of the old stone experts would answer.

My only answer is really it would depend on which facets and where and how big.
A few girdle dings are going to have 0 impact on performance.
Small chips around the edge of the table will have some effects in some lighting.
Chips in the other crown facets will have varying effects on that side of the stone and by reflection the parts opposite.
They can range from mild to bad.

As far as the effect on VF''s go they act as extra facets and add more small virtual facets.

 

[beaujolais]

--- As far as the effect on VF''s go they act as extra facets and add more small virtual facets.---

The oracle has spoken.

Makes sense. Thanks so much !

Sonoma