|
|
| Home > Education > Asha� H&A Cut |
| Asha� Hearts & Arrows
Cut |
| |
In order to view how light
is being reflected within a stone, various viewers are used that magnify your view of the gem, and tint the light so that the eye view how the light is being reflected. They do under various names depending on what jewelry store you visit, but most high end jewelry stores will have one. They look like this (The image on the right).
Hears and Arrows Scope4 |
 |
|
When viewed
with the tinted light, patterns will show up on the stone.
A typical round gem will show a whirl pattern, with no real
symmetry. What this shows is that the facets are not in
proper alignment, resulting in a blurred out look as the
light bounces around and is leaked out rather than being
reflected back to the viewer.
By contrast,
the top of a hearts and arrows gem will show a perfect crisp arrows pattern, visually indicating that all the facets are
in alignment, and that the light return has been maximized
by the cutter.
In
similar fashion, you can view the bottom of the
Hearts and Arrows gem and see the following pattern (on the right):
|
| |
Again, the crisp pattern shows that the bottom half of the stone's facets are also in perfect proportion and symmetry. Any misalignment of any facet will result in arrows that bend at the tips, or hearts that are uneven or other blurring out of what should be a perfect, crisp pattern. |
Arrows -
Crown
 |
Hearts -
Pavillion
 |
|
So why aren't
all round diamonds cut to Hearts and Arrows? The reason is
simple: time and money. A typical round cut
diamond can be finished in roughly 2 hours. By
contrast, a Hearts and Arrows diamond can take anywhere from
8 hours to several days, and even then may not show the
perfect symmetry required to produce the crisp Hearts and
Arrows pattern. The more cutting time involved, the more
the cutter has to charge for his/her time. While cutting an
Asha�
is
simpler than diamond because you have a flawless rough to
work with, our cutters have to spend on average 8x as
long for the Asha�
H&A
simulant vs. if they simply wanted to cut a standard round
brilliant.
Additionally,
in the diamond world, diamonds are often cut to achieve a
certain size. Most retail customers are very focused on the
size of a diamond -i.e. they want a 1 ct. A diamond
achieves a heart and arrows cut by cutting away a lot of
original rough. Thus, diamond rough that could be cut into
an average round 1 ct. may only amount to a .70 Hearts and
Arrows cut. Thus, most cutters will opt to please the
typical consumer who is interested in a specific size
diamond, and additionally, many cutters do not have the
skill necessary or the funding to produce something as rare
as a Hearts and Arrows cut.
|
|
< Back |
|
