Cabochon – Harry & Co Jewellery

Application and Purpose of Cabochon Cutting

Cutting cabochon is usually applied to opaque gems.
Faceting is usually used for transparent stones.
Soft gemstones with a hardness lower than 7 on the Mohs hardness scale are easily scratched.
Translucent gems are polished as cabochons to make the scratches less evident.
Domed cabochon cut can show the star or eye in asteriated and chatoyant stones.

The procedure involves cutting a slab of the rough rock with a slab saw.
A shape is stenciled from a template onto the slab.
The slab is trimmed near the marked line using a diamond blade saw or a trim saw.
Rough rock is ground down using diamond-impregnated wheels or silicon carbide wheels.
The piece is then dopped onto a wooden dowel called a dop stick and ground to the template line.

The usual shape for cutting cabochons is an ellipse.
The eye is less sensitive to small asymmetries in an ellipse compared to a uniformly round shape.
Cabochons on some watch crowns are circular.
The elliptical shape, combined with the dome, is attractive.
Circular cabochons on watch crowns are an exception.

'Rock and Gem' (1st Americaned.). DK. ISBN0-7566-0962-3.
'Cutting and Polishing Gemstones - A Collection of Historical Articles on the Methods and Equipment Used for Working Gems'. Read Books Ltd. 2014. ISBN9781473395398. Retrieved 21 August 2022.
The cutting and carving of gems were probably first done in ancient Babylon several thousand years before Christ.
Various references and sources related to gemstone cutting and cabochon making.
Additional information and historical context about the methods and equipment used for working gems.

Reference	URL
Glossary	https://harryandcojewellery.com.au/blogs/glossary/cabochon
Wikipedia	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabochon
Wikidata	https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q615008
Knowledge Graph	https://www.google.com/search?kgmid=/m/01s97h