Talk:Akhavan - Sylphid's Storm

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Note: This diagram is one of an 8-part suite of stones. <put link here once I'm done with the suite>

So, I have a list of stones that I'd like to design, for my 8-part suite. One of them was named Sylphid's Storm. The first thing that came to mind was that I should design a crown that looked similar to the hurricane weather symbol, so that's what I tried to do. The girdle outline was a result of taking my "Undine's Tears" outline and subjecting it to random operations in GemCAD, to see if I could get something that a hurricane symbol would fit inside. I ended up with a non-bilaterally symmetric marquise.

Originally, I had a barion pavilion (which had a REALLY COOL windowing effect around the primary reflecting cone, that made it look exactly like the eye wall of a hurricane - take a look below!), but the light return was pisspoor, so I replaced it with a keel. Just like with any high or weird L/W design, there's lots of scintillation and high light return in the ends, and a pretty standard light reflection in the middle. Light return and tilt brightness are nice and high, somehow. And although this design looks amazing in tan-colored scapolite (what other color would wind be?), it works in any material from feldspar to CZ (RI = 1.52 - 2.16) with no changes. I wouldn't try to go with lower RIs, and if you go with higher RI, make the pavilion shallower and raise the crown.

Now, a warning for cutting. You would not believe the mental gymnastics I had to go through in order to write the pavilion such that it would generate the girdle outline through meetpoints, while also grouping girdle facets together to reduce the number of mast and angle changes. If you screw up here, you'll hate yourself for the huge amount of extra work you've just created. Also, because of the extreme lack of symmetry, there are a LOT of mast and height changes. That's unavoidable.


Difficulty level = mid intermediate

Sylphid's Storm (barion version) (render).jpg