Talk:Akhavan - Butts

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Well, I finally gave in and wrote a true navette/marquise. I'm not a particular fan of keeled stones in general, but I figured that this might come in handy if I have a longish tourmaline crystal with cracks at the ends. Finishing the crown in an interesting way got really frustrating, so I just simplified it and called the design "Butts" as a way to work off steam.

This design is surprisingly good with light return. Sure, as with all keels, it'll have a window if you rock using the keel as an axis, but this one is still pretty good. There's not a lot of light paths that travel down the C-axis, so this might be a good option for closed-C tourmaline. I haven't had a chance to test it, though, so take that with a grain of salt. The pattern can be cut in any material from feldspar to high zircon (RI = 1.52 - 1.93), but I wouldn't go any higher than that without optimizing.

The pavilion builds on itself, so messing up an earlier meet might cause problems down the line. The crown, on the other hand, is really easy to deal with, and barring the constant mast changes, should be very easy. Thankfully, there's only one row of facets.


Difficulty level = low intermediate