he cut of a diamond is a very complex member of the 4C¡¯s. More has probably been written in the last ten years about cut than all of the other 4C¡¯s put together. At this time, there are great debates going on within the trade about what really is the best performing cut proportions. If you visit the two sites listed below, you can see that the trade and the consumers have gotten into the debate, and sometimes the debate is less than civil.
While it is true that many proportions of diamond cutting may produce beautiful stones, there are certain proportions that will produce more light return to the eye than others.
A great web site that delves deep into the cut of a diamond is www.Pricescope.com. You can find both tutorials and ongoing discussions about cut in complete detail that will take many hours to research. You will also find links to other sites that have much more complex and complete tutorials on cutting.
Overview
Cutting is what makes the raw diamond crystal change from a pretty pebble to a beautiful stone. If done properly it can release incredible flashes of both white light, called brilliance, and colored light, called dispersion.
If done poorly, a stone can be basically a lifeless lump of crystallized carbon, allowing most of the light that enters it from the top to escape somewhere out the bottom of the stone and providing little in the way of beauty for us to look at. Why would anyone do this you ask? To retain weight.
Diamonds are sold by weight, and to cut a rough diamond into a finished diamond will require the loss of much of the weight of the rough diamond, often the finished weight will be as little as 20 to 35% of the starting weight. Certain styles of cutting can retain more weight, at the expense of the beauty of the finished stone. So long as the buyers remain largely ignorant of what is available, such stones can be sold in the mass markets.
Technology Advances
But in the last twenty years there have been advances in the technology of cutting that allow the diamond cutters of today to produce stones of such excellent brilliance and beauty that they are called the ¡°Super Ideals¡±. There are two types of ¡°super ideal¡± cut diamonds, the EightStar Diamonds which can be seen at www.EightStar.com, and the Hearts and Arrows quality cut diamonds of which there are both branded and unbranded versions. Winfield's sells the EightStar diamonds and the Infinity brand of Hearts and Arrows cut diamonds here as well as several unbranded stones. Here is an article from EightStar that helps to better explain the cutting process.
Both the EightStar and the Hearts and Arrows quality cut diamond will produce a unique Hearts and Arrows pattern when seen under a Hearts and Arrows viewer. This pattern will tell you that at least 17 of the major facets are perfectly aligned and in balance with one another. In the EightStar, all 57 facets are in perfect balance with one another.
After the ¡°super ideals¡± come the ideals, the premium cuts, and then the regular cuts.
Winfield's Stones
Although Winfield's will occasionally have a stone here that is not one of the super ideals, it is usually because we have taken the stone in on trade. When we have them they will be heavily discounted and can represent a very real bargain for the buyer who is looking for more ¡°flash for the cash¡±.
To be honest, some of these stones are very beautiful in their own right, but we at Winfield's are perhaps a touch spoiled about our diamonds and enjoy selling the higher quality of cuts because that is what we enjoy wearing and seeing on our clients.
21st Century Technology
There has also been an explosion in the technology that allows us to analyze the performance of the light in a diamond, and both GIA and AGS laboratories are racing to see who can be the first major laboratory to the market with a truly performance based cut grading scale, which will again shake up the diamond world and increase the fervor of the debate. Stay tuned for more interesting developments!
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