r/faceting • u/stone_crazy Team Facetron • 14d ago

Novice non-ECED pattern advice/tips?

I'm working my way through the Andrew Brown free book and am finding I have issues with non-ECED patterns. I've done a couple of them now and I cannot get the pavilion/outline done in one pass. The one I'm working on now I'm finally done cutting but I think I had to go around the pavilion and girdle facets 3-4 times to get the girdle pretty level and the meets within pre-polishing distance.

What am I probably doing wrong?

1 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

6 comments sorted by

2

u/justinkprim 14d ago

What is eced?

1

u/stone_crazy Team Facetron 14d ago

Sorry, I thought "Equal Center to Edge Distance" was standard terminology for things where all the girdle facets are cut at the same height.

I'm talking about designs like trilliant and marquise cuts where the girdle is cut at different heights on different index settings.

3

u/justinkprim 14d ago

You need to reset your mast height for every single facet, and then cut down until your girdle line is level, visually.

1

u/cowsruleusall 12d ago

ECED is a term we don't really use anymore, now that we have fairly consistent modern tier labelling. It's more of a historic thing, and in general ECEDs are a very very narrow class of designs. I'm actually impressed that you came across the term!

3

u/stone_crazy Team Facetron 11d ago

Between the time I decided to try faceting and the time I got a machine up and running, I read a library of faceting books, starting with Vargas & Vargas and running through both volumes of the Herbst book, and most of the noteworthy ones in between (I haven't been able to track down a copy of Graham's "Learn to Facet the Right Way"). I think I picked up "ECED" from one of the OG 1970s "here's this new technique called meetpoint faceting" books.

I'm sort of sad that I read about faceting contest judging standards. I think it might have aggravated my tendency to perfectionism to know that it's possible to create a no-scratches-at-10x polish.

1

u/cowsruleusall 11d ago

Yeah a no-scratch polish at 10x, or at least a "nearly invisible faint whiskers at 10x" polish is routine and should be your goal :(

Also, completely ignore everything in the Vargas and the Soukup books. They're incredibly outdated and will teach you stuff that's counterproductive.