Interernational Lapidary Association

Share your current projects with all the ILA family! Just send your images altered in size to 200 pixels in width (any height) along with a brief description of each to:

owner-faceters@caprock-spur.com

This first image is taken with the lighting about 45 degrees off viewing axis - I tried to take an image with the light overhead, but the stone returned too much light and oversaturated my digital camera.

This second image is with the light overhead, but looking at the gem 45 degrees off vertical axis.

This last image of the stone is in shadow so that you can see some of the facet detail. The actual stone could not be photographed this way in light because it was simply too brilliant.

Here are a couple of shots of the winning gemstone by Joseph Volkel in the Brilliance contest that we held in September. The idea was to cut the most brilliant gem "face up" to win the contest. As it turned out though, the stones entered showed radically differing types of brilliance, and we learned something about brilliance and what is most pleasing to the eye in that regard. All of our stones were cut by individuals of varying ability, and all were just beautiful! - Paul

Here are two Maine tourmaline's, one is a rubellite pear and it is 22.70 ct's - and the emerald bi-color is 27.32 ct's - they are the biggest tourmalines that are in my colection and highly sought after.

Darren Russell
Maine

Here are two stones which I cut that were a lot of fun to
cut because of the challenges.

The first stone is a 15.25mm 11.65ct light yellow/green
spodumene done in Jeff Graham's "Odd Round n' Round"cut.
Spodumene is quite a challenge because of it's perfect
cleavage. The first one I tried split from the tip of the
cullet right down to the table. When I took it in to show my
wife it split at 90º to the first cleavage while we watched,
so I felt pretty good about finishing this one.

The second stone while not AS stressful was still
challenging enough to be fun. It's a tri-color tourmaline,
24.25mm X 5mm, 5.45ct. cut in a modified Smithsonian Bar
(Jeff Graham's design again). There were a couple of runs
showing on the skin when I started but with a light touch I
was able to cut through them. This one is the longest
tourmaline I've cut so far.

Noel Rowe

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