Cutting the Ultimate Gem Rupee

I don't know when it was, maybe here, or here, or probably here, but at some point I fell in love with RUBIES. I mean rupees. And when I started cutting gems, one of the first things I did was make some in real life. But I did get a few complaints that they didn't look enough like the ones in the games. There's always some tension between going really literal and cutting a gem that works well as a gem, so I'm going to cut these stones into rupees in 5 different ways, from very literal to very gem-like, and you can tell me which one's best. First up I'm going to cut this green laser garnet into a very literal rupee. Just a hexagonal outline, 45 degree bevels, and two flat faces. This cut is very simple, but it's actually more difficult than it looks, because polishing a few large facets is actually harder and more time consuming than several small ones. That's not the reason I don't usually cut them this way though. Gems get their brilliance and fire from light entering the stone, bouncing around inside, and then bouncing into your eye. But if the gem's totally flat on both sides, then light just passes right through like a windowpane. That's the theory anyway, but let's get it off the top and see how it actually looks. You know, it's actually better than I expected. Obviously it's not a lively stone, but the simple geometry has a really striking look, and the bevels do bounce a bit of light back as it moves around. Not my favorite optically, but a lot nicer than I expected. But let's make the next one just a little more complex, with this blue rupee and labbed sapphire. Instead of a flat back, this design has angled rectangular faces that meet at a sharp edge. This lets the back of the gem act more like a mirror than a window, so it reflects more light and color back at you. This type of design is called a step cut, and it tends to emphasize color over brilliance. So even though rupees are modeled differently in 3D games, the look should still be very similar to how they looked in the 2D games. It'll just have a bit more flash than the really literal one, and look less like a piece of glass. The top is still really simple, but I did add some secondary bevel facets. It looks nice and it makes the stone a little harder to chip. Now let's get it off the top and see what we've got. I think this one is really nice. You lose some of the simplicity, but it's so much brighter and more lively, you can just turn it around in your hand and watch it flash. But now, I'm going to push it even further with this yellow GAGG Lumo Garnet. Step cut gems have mostly rectangular facets, which give them a very simple look. But on this design, I added some long, brilliant triangular facets to the mix. This should give more complexity to the reflections inside the stone and just make it a lot more lively, with more sparkle as you turn it. You can see this pavilion has a lot more going on, and once I got that finished, I moved on to the crown, which is still very simple and classic. Now let's see if it worked. Yeah, I gotta say, this one is really neat. It's definitely a little less classic, but it's so much more lively and exciting than the basic step cut. And I feel like it's still not too far from the classic look of a rupee, just with a few extra details. Next up is the red rupee in Lab Ruby, and this one's going to be a little wacky. Instead of adding brilliant facets, I broke up those rectangular step facets into squares. The idea of course is to turn it into a pixelated rupee, just like the sprites in the games of my youth. I've actually been trying to figure out a good pixel cut rupee for a long time, but I felt like my previous attempts sacrificed the rupee look just a bit too much. Getting these facets to come in square is slow and meticulous work, and when I'd just gotten everything perfect and started polishing, the entire edge sheared off and I had to do it all again. I absolutely love cutting gems, but sometimes it's just... But in the end, I did get it to cooperate, and fortunately the top went in much smoother. This one was really painful, so I can't wait to see how it came out. You know, I think this one is really cool, but I need to tweak the design a bit more. I like the pixeliness, but it's a bit finicky on which lighting it works best in. Still, I do really like it, and in a way it's a lot more literal than the literal one. Maybe too literal. I don't know. And with that, we move on to our final golden rupee, cut in our custom-grown Super Cerium YAG. It's not literally golden like some I've cut in the past, but that ridiculous yellow glow makes it look like it's out of a video game already. For this design, I ditched the classic step cut entirely. The pavilion is made up of a starburst of pointed radiant facets. This is probably the most gem-like design of any of these, just pointy triangles meeting in the center of the stone. If you were to ask a kindergartner to draw a gem, it would probably look a bit like this. Once that's done, I top it off with one last simple rupee crown, and we're ready to go. And now for the last time, let's get it off the top and see how it looks. You know, you can tell this really isn't like a rupee in the game at all, but I really like how it looks. Those facets are just full of life, and as you turn the stone, it flashes brilliantly. Even aside from the crazy nuclear glow, it just catches the light. So this brings us to the final question, which one do you like best? The simple classic look, the weird pixel, the heretical radiant, or one of the ones in between? Let me know in the comments! I want to keep working on these designs, so tell me what you want to see more of, what you hate, and what type of gem you want to see cut as a rupee next. These stones are all available on our site, of course just one of each, but we also had some others cut in our classic materials, which we have more of. And if you want to try cutting gems yourself, we have our cut kit faceting kit to get started on a budget. I actually cut all of these on a cut kit myself. You can check them out at the link in my bio, or go to gemsofscience.com to get yours.