Jeweler’s Brief: Repairs & Recutting (part 1)

To me there is a significant difference between the words repair and recutting.  The words certainly overlap in meaning but they call for different approaches to the gem and take different amounts of time/effort to complete.  Understanding which service you need may help you both to estimate the costs involved and in preparing your client for what needs to be done.

Repairing a gemstone is reworking an area, perhaps as small as a single facet, to remove some sort of damage.  Typically, repair is less extensive than  a recut, though it may take just as much or more time to complete.  In repair work, very minimal weight loss may be expected.  Generally, the extent and placement of damage on a gem’s surface determines if the stone needs a repair or a recut.

Recutting is more extensive than just a repair.  At a minimum, it requires reworking one side of the stone; crown or pavilion, sometimes the girdle too.  At most, recutting involves treating the existing stone as if it were gem rough and changing it completely.  In many cases, especially with long-loved ring stones with a lot of surface damage, recutting is preferable to a repair.  How much material is lost to recutting varies greatly.  Generally, the smaller the change to the overall shape of the stone, the better the yield.   In a restoration scenario, a skilled cutter can often recut a crown or pavilion with very little weight loss.

Sometimes a cutter may use the terms repolish or retouch.  These are usually used as synonyms for repair.  While occasionally only a polish lap is used for gemstone repair, most of the time a somewhat coarser lap is needed to undercut damage.  Typically, this is the prepolish lap, a fine lap used in preparing coarse facets for polishing.  If a coarser cutting lap than that is needed, we’re talking about recutting.

At the cutting bench, repair and recutting sometimes overlap in practice.   Many times, a crown with a lot of apparently small chips and minor scratches will require a recut.  Not because a lot of material need to be removed, but because recutting is often much faster and easier than attempting to map the angle and position of each existing facet in preparation for a per-facet repair.   This is especially true where poorly cut commercial stones are concerned.  While such stones may look symmetric at a glance, any cutter will tell you how little symmetry is actually there at the facet level — recutting becomes the method of choice with such stones.

But, of course, when a stone must go back into it’s original setting or has a particularly high value, slow and careful repair work is the only option.

So, when talking with clients keep in mind that sometimes recutting is the better option over simple repair, though it sounds more dramatic.  Along the same lines, a “simple touch-up” can become rather more extensive if at tiny chip crosses too many facet junctions and/or has an unstable section underneath.  So, I suggest being cautious with your clients on these points and consider sending good, clear images to your cutter for advice if you have any doubt.

I’m happy to help you decide which approach is best for your client’s gemstone.  Sending a few clear images and a quick conversation is usually all that’s needed.  But even if that misses an important detail, I always carefully evaluate every stone before beginning any work so there are no surprises.  Whether the stone needs to go back into it’s original vintage setting or is going to become a completely new design for a custom piece, I’m here to help.