No matter how I look at this orange round it is orange. And orange is not a common color in tourmaline. It is a bit on the fruity side and I like to think of a nice cantaloupe rather than peach(yellower) with this one. It has a clearly visible feather that runs under 1/3 of the table. It does not flash out its existence and in a rare color, you do what you have to do to make a gemstone. The gemstone’s crystal is very good and since the flaw is pretty well limited to one feather it is still nice and bright and flashy.
This round has a standard pavilion, but an extra deep crown. The crown is a modified step cut that I find makes a nice bright stone and helps me to try a retain as much color in lightly color gemstones as possible. (To get the deepest gemstones I make a split horizontal main pavilion along with this crown.) The gemstone ended up having a very nice tone level. The deep round weighs in at 5.64 carats
Bruce
About Bruce Fry
I was born in Summit, NJ in 1947 and graduated from Summit High School in 1966. I graduated from the Colorado School of Mines in 1970 and after spending another year in graduate school, I left to see the world of Brazil. After spending some more time discovering myself, I ended up working for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for 32 years as an Air Quality Engineer in the Department of Environmental Protection. I retired in 2007 and took up faceting gemstones again after a long hiatus that reached back to my twenties. I had started cutting cabochons when I was 13 and bought my first faceting machine when I was 15, but ran out of money and time until I retired.
My great love in gemology is tourmaline and the collection presented here represents my effort to get as much beauty and variety in the colors of tourmaline as I can. I was particularly lucky in being able to get unheated cuprian tourmaline before copper was discovered in gem grade tourmaline from Mozambique.
