Information on Gemstones

Faceting Gemstones
Sri lanka has a long history of faceting gemstones , the earliest recorded faceted gemstones from sri lanka are in the pyramids of Egypt. It is said sri lankan kings gifted Precious gems to Egyptian kings for there tombs. even during 1920 when Ceylon ( as sri lanka was called then ) was importing Opals from australia for cutting and shipping them to hong kong for sale.

The Earliest faceting machines did not have index wheels or calibrating equipment. the ones we used today are copies of the Immahashi ( japanese )

	SAWING Here Our rough is sawn by an expert sawer, with a powerful light hanging close by he sees all the inclusions clearly ... He might also apply Kerosene oil or coconut oil on the gem rough to see through clearly. The Shapes will be decided at this stage.
SAWING Closer view of the cutting blade in action , its a 6 inch and the width is only 0.35 inch blade. the thinner the blade less wastage we will have.
	Once we have sawn the rough it looks like this, We have lost close to 40% of the original weight, and the rejects are separated to send back.
Pre forming Once the stones are sawn there are rough edges, The stones have to be ground to the desired shape here we use a 100 grit 6 Inch lap
	A closer view of pre forming
Doping the stone To facet the stone we need to fix the stone to the facetor, hence we use a wax to fix the stone and the doping stick
	Faceting the Crown First we do the Crown on a 260 diamond lap. then using a 600 lap we re do the same facets to get a finer polished surface after which we polish using a copper / Tin /zinc ( depending on the stone ) lap with 1 micron Diamond powder mixed with coconut oil ... After the crown is done We polish the girdle this is to stop chipping of the girdle . Also Note Each facetor has a Loupe to check each facet.
Transferring Unlike in hobby cutting transferring is done by hand , we have experts who do this correctly ( we need to do transfer around 300 gems a day )
	Faceting the rest Here again we use a 260 diamond lap, then using a 600 lap we re do the same facets to get a finer polished surface after which we polish using a copper / Tin /zinc ( depending on the stone ) lap with 1 micron Diamond powder mixed with coconut oil ... At this point we also do the Girdle and before we remove the wax we do a quality inspection .

	Washing Initial washing is done on Caustic Soda or thinner after which we give it a shampoo rinse where all oil and greasy stuff is removed and a shiny bright stone is packed for shipping.