Cutting Gemstones, the Dummy Method

Faceting an emerald

One of the Antisocial Network staff researchers was prepping for Leaf.tv week; which basically means "looking for bullshit on the site." A lot of the website's devoted to food and makeup, topics where we're fairly weak, so she was simply googling random terms. When she googled "circular saw," she was flabbergasted to come across the term in a post by Brendan McGuigan: not only are carpentry projects rare fodder for Leaf.tv (a niche site for women that repurposes old eHow.com content), the title of McGuigan's piece is "How to Cut Rough Emeralds" (they've taken away Brendan's byline, but not the stupidity).

It's  possible that the term "circular saw" would come up in a discussion of how to cut diamonds, the shape, that is; but an emerald is not a shape: it's a precious stone. And, although no one here has ever faceted a gem ("faceting" being the term of art for cutting jewels), we have a pretty good idea that Brendan is totally full of it when he says,

"Cut the rough emerald down to the general shape you’ve decided on. Use a circular saw for flat lines, and a jigsaw for curved lines. Make sure to use a blade with a hardness sufficient to cut the emerald — preferably a diamond blade." Whaaaaa???? Surely this guy is kidding! But no, he continues in this vein, since he soon instructs his readers to, "Polish the stone using a belt sander if you want a true shine on it. Make sure to use the finest-grained plates you can find to remove every last scratch from the emerald. Skip this step if you’d like a matte finish for your emerald."

Oh. My. God! Some Demand Media¹ content editor actually let this utter bull out onto the internet!

No, Brendan, even if you did collect a BA in linguistics in just two years (which we rather doubt), you can't be stupid enough to think that people can use carpenter's tools to cut rough gems! Surely, this was meant to be a prank? One you never thought would get into print? Better that you had actually researched your topic and found a simple explanation like this one for how gemcutters facet stones. But no, you apparently wanted to add a Dumbass of the Day award to your trophy shelf. Well, you have one now.

¹ Demand Media Systems, aka DMS (you can't spell "dumbass" without "DMS"), changed its name to Leaf Group in 2016. Talk about making a silk purse out of a sow's ear...

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