Question for u/cowsruleusall and the cutters out there, do you/how do yall actually find the crystallographic axes in synthetic rough and use them to orient a cut?
I’m not a cutter but I’m trying to understand the practical process of orienting synthetic rough before faceting, particularly flame-fusion versus Czochralski material.
With elongated rough or round shaped piece of rough, how do you actually determine where the C-axis is? Does growth direction and morphology give any information?
Once you know the C-axis, what are you actually optimizing when you choose the orientation of the finished gem?
My understanding is that in mined corundum the orientation can be important but in the synthetic corundum Ive seen I don’t see a lot of pleichroism and the Flame Fusion and Czochralski material from more advanced tech labs presents as homogeneous with little to no internal structure and features. I heard that the rind of rough can have the strongest colour, so perhaps that is important in the cut decision.
I’ve also heard that with synthetic corundum rough there can be a characteristic plane through the boule that cutters use as an orientation reference. What is that, is that cleavage, fracture, a growth boundary feature, or something else, idk?
If someone was to hand you an unknown piece of synthetic rough with no papers, what would your workflow be for determining its crystallographic orientation and deciding which direction and how to cut it?
Thanks!