Variations on Standard Brillianteering of Round Brilliant Diamonds

process — cutters sometimes use “painting” or its opposite “digging out” to improve weight retention. However, these processes can affect the face-up appearance of a diamond, particularly its contrast pattern. Figure 1 (top) illustrates a round brilliant diamond before this last polishing step, which includes the fashioning of the stars and the halves (also called the upper girdle and lower girdle facets) that produce the final girdle profile. Figure 2 shows a girdle profile with “standard” brillianteering (no painting or digging out). The average thickness of the girdle at the bezel-main junctions is about equal to its thickness at the upper and lower half junctions (that is, distance B is equal to distance A).While distance A is largely determined during the initial planning stage, distance B can be determined during the final steps of polishing as it is solely the result of the upper-half and lower-half facet polishing. Painting is produced by shifting the upper-half or lower-half facet positions in relation to the bezels or pavilion mains so that there is less definition between them. Because the half facets are anchored at the point of the star facets or the junction of the pavilion mains, G E M O L O G Y