Gemstone repolishing

by anthonylloydrees on September 27, 2009

With gems of serious value, when saving a few points is real money, the increased time involved in locating each original facet and repolishing it, is worth paying for.

Other than that repolishing is somewhat of a misnomer because a damaged or abraded stone is invariably recut and then polished. Even if a stone has only received light scratching and abrasion, that might be removed with a polishing lap, it is usually quicker and cheaper to recut.

Tanzanite, which is a relatively soft gemstone is one of my most frequent visitors. This material is not really suited for hard wear but inevitably gets put into rings where it quickly deteriorates into a stone looking like this one;abraded Tanzanite sadly my work is only temporary as this stone will go back into the ring;repolished tanzanite

Much restoration work is relatively mundane and this Emerald qualifies nicely;crown abraded Emerald
and after a crown recut;repolished Emerald

This Citrine was certainly more fun, but hardly anything to do with me;crown abraded CitrineIt has a contour faceted pavilion that provides all of the excitement. I just got to reveal it once more with a crown recut;repolished Citrine

As much fun as it is restoring a Citrine like the one above, there is considerably more satisfaction when a stones pavilion is recut to improve performance. Here are a couple of very clean red Spinels that were unfortunately not as dust free as the photog thought;[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSJtr_45JPg[/youtube]and an oval;[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NWNT0HUUyc[/youtube]

Finally I have a more sad repolishing story. This is a classic borax glass filled Ruby, a customer’s stone, that was inadvertently put into the jewellers acid pickle. The resultant etching and whitening necessitated the entire stone having to be recut sufficiently to remove all the offensive damage. Luckily the stone still fit into its original setting;[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keAHikzbRW4[/youtube]

Tony.

anthonylloydrees

anthonylloydrees

Leave a Comment

Previous post:

Next post:

WordPress Admin