What It Takes To Become A Faceter

by Carl Mauritz

I started to get in to faceting back in 1999 when I got up enough nerves to try it. I bought out a rock shop from Bob Ditman in 1996 thanks to Ed Dibble for telling me about the shop. You see with this shop I got some gem equipment, a Graves Mack 1 faceting machine, two trim saws - one 4" and one 8", Lorton cab machine, and all the faceting equipment I needed to start out with. My Shop

To start I got some books on how to facet by some of the top Faceters out there. Like Faceting For Amateurs by Glen & Martha Vargas, Faceting the Easy Way by Jeff Gram, Learn how to facet by Donald Clark of the IGS (International Gem Society), ect. I read these books over and over then I got the Graves Mack 1 out and started to set it up. Next I took some facet rough I had and decided to cut a Lazar Glass one first. I looked at the piece of Lazar Glass to decided how I was going to dop it. I had black wax so I started by heating up the stone and dop. Then as the wax got hot I applied it to the dop, then I took the piece of glass and put it on the wax and centered it on the dop. After it cooled down I took the dop & glass and mounted it on the faceting head of the Graves. Next I had to decide what design to cut so I took the book Meet Point Faceting by Long & Steel and decided to start on the SRB.