Faceting a 1.3 carat Yogo sapphire (& breaking gem cutting rules)

This isn’t your typical faceting video…

I finally got my hands on a Yogo Sapphire — a rare, natural gem from Montana known for its brilliant cornflower blue color and intense clarity. The raw piece was super thin, and way too beautiful to follow the rules with. So I didn’t!

Instead of cutting a standard pavilion, I left the back table raw to showcase the unique natural texture of the original crystal. It’s my first time cutting a Yogo, and I wanted to do something a little different with this one.

This video walks through my full faceting process, including the design I chose, how I worked around the thinness of the stone, and why I decided to break one of the biggest “rules” in gem cutting.

Let me know what you think of the final result — would you have done the same?

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Thank you so much for watching, and I hope you enjoyed this video 💙