Policy on cutting gems to order in a custom size or shape.

We love our clients and want them to be happy, and are also convinced that doing high quality cutting tailored to the individual gem rough is the best way.

So here is the story of how we try to honor the rare natural gems we work with and also best serve you!

Why we don't cut to a specific size. Montana Sapphire Rough being prepared to cut

Montana Sapphire rough crystals waiting to be ground into their "preformed" shape for cutting.

Gems by definition are rare natural crystals. Natural crystals cannot be melted and poured, stretched or added together. Each has its own specific properties, shape, color, etc. It was extracted from the ground at the cost of a tremendous amount of labor by the miner and has its own unique character and beauty. Since the gems we work with are natural minerals they are also a limited natural resource and as such are much more precious than a man-made product from a factory or laboratory.

Because of how special we feel each gem is we have the goal of cutting the "best" and most beautiful gem that we can out of each piece of rough. I feel that each unique rough gem crystal should reach as close to its maximum potential for beauty as possible.

Choosing the correct cut for the gem rough

Example: Australian Sapphire rough and different gem shapes.

Can you see how some shapes "fit" the rough far better than others? This picture is a simplified version of this concept because the shape has to actually be compared in 3D and in all directions to find the best cut to do, but it helps to be able to see that with some options FAR more weight is lost than with others. (In this case the Cushion #2 or Oval #5 shape would probably be the best shape for this rough.)

Not only is the shape important, but the cutting style also has a great influence on both the yield of the rough and even more importantly the final beauty of the finished gem. It would be a shame to cut a gem in a way that was big but wasn't beautiful. Small subtleties like transparency, saturation of color, inclusions, optic properties and more are all taken into account when choosing the cut and the cutting style. Based on these factors I can choose to use flat facets, concave facets, a shallower or deeper cut design and many other fine points that might not be immediately obvious, but result in a more beautiful and unique finished gem.

If a gem cutter were to custom cut a gem according to very strict specifications of dimensions and cutting style, the client very likely will end up with a gem that is less beautiful than expected and less beautiful than what that rough could have ideally been. That is because the rough is usually not perfectly suited to that cutting style. Because of these and other factors if I believe that a specific cut is NOT the best use for the rough we will not do it.

Our main attempt to serve you

We try to have one of the largest selections of fine precision and artistically cut gemstones for sale on the internet. In this broad selection there is very often a gem that you will love. See our online catalog here. To try to achieve this goal we do very few trade shows and avoid traveling to sell as much as possible to focus on time in the studio and cutting as many gems as possible to list on our website.

NOTE: If at all possible, it is far better to not decide in advance EXACTLY the shape, size, shade of color and cut you want in a gemstone. The more flexibility you have the better chance you have of finding a great gem. Think of it like this, when you look for a gem it is for a permanent relationship just as when you marry someone. If you decide beforehand that you want to marry a person who is 5 foot 8 inches tall, speaks with a British accent, has brown eyes and likes cats, what are the chances you would find someone who exactly fits those parameters AND has a personality you can love?

In the same way it is far better to get to know as many gems as possible and have a somewhat open mind. Of course there will be certain things (shapes or colors for example) that you just can't stand and will eliminate some otherwise lovely gems from your considerations. But the broader the scope in your search the better of a chance you have to find a unique gem you will truly love. It might very well be a gem that is far better suited to you than you had ever imagined!

What happens if you don't find a gem we have that you love?

While by far the fastest and easiest route is to find something in our large inventory that is ready to go, sometimes none of them just speak to you or there is a specific kind of material or shape that is in short supply on our website at the moment. At this point it is important to remember that we will only cut a gem in a way that we believe is best for the rough so there are some limitations to what we will cut.

Big benefits for our clients

Our policy means that YOU don't ever have to get stuck with a gem that didn't come out how you expected! Because we always will cut the gem or gems you are asking about in a manner that is tailored to the rough and not make it something it doesn't "want to be" that means the finished gems are something we are happy with having in inventory. Since we cut the gem as we would have anyway we are only out a little extra effort in helping you through the process. So even for "custom" gemstone orders we usually do not require a downpayment AND we still offer you our 14 day return policy! If you don't love the gem we will just sell it to our other clients. Also, in some cases we will even cut more than one gem so we can allow you to pick your favorite one and then just put the other gem or gems into inventory to offer on our website.

No one gets stuck with a gem they don't like or a deposit that cannot be refunded. This has proven to be the happiest way to work for everyone.

The only risk for you is that we might not come up with a gem that will work out for you and then you have spent some time without any result, except for the experience of accompanying the process and probably learning some things during it.

How does the custom cutting process work?

This is where we have faced a challenge over the years in figuring out how to best serve you, our valued client, while also honoring what we feel the rough was intended to be. What we tried to do for a number of years was each time we got a request we would dig through our extensive rough inventory looking for a piece or pieces that would fit the client's request. However, since there are often surprises in the cutting process it is usually not possible to exactly predict just from the rough what the ideal cut for that piece is without starting to work on it. The photo and caption below explain this process more.

Preforming sapphire rough to see what shape and cut works best for it

The Three Main Steps of Gem Cutting

Rough, Preform, Finished!

(Listed from top to bottom)

These are the three steps in gem cutting that define the shape of a gem. Starting with the gem crystal a preform is ground into the approximate shape and proportions of the finished gem. Then this preform is cut and polished into a beautiful finished stone. Sometimes the rough looks like the exact shape it will end up being; often though there are surprises. An example is the pink rough on the right which doesn't look like a round at all, but due to inclusions and other factors ended up being a round!

Photo: Sapphires from Madagascar cut by John Dyer & Co.

Because of how unpredictable the ideal final shape and cut for a specific gem rough is before preforming this often meant that I had to find many pieces of rough that looked like they had potential for that shape, size, color and style. Then we had to track each rough crystal, keeping notes on which lot is was from, the origin, enhancements and all the other factors and preform them each to see what shape, size and style it was probably going to be.

(Usually after preforming we have quite a good idea of what we will get. To be absolutely sure of the final result the gem must be faceted as there are sometimes still changes during the faceting process to best optimize the cut, and sometimes subtleties of exact color are only known when the gem is finished. However, these changes are far less common or smaller than what happens during the preforming process.)

The challenge to best serve as many people as we can

As you can probably tell, this whole process of searching through hundreds of gemstone roughs and carefully trying to discern the final color, shape, cutting style and clarity of each piece and then preforming a number of them to see if my analysis was confirmed is quite time consuming. So much so that it often resulted in me spending a day or two just to see if we MIGHT have something which could be cut to a specific client's request. Multiply this by the number of requests we get and what happened was all this time spent meant that we were getting far fewer gems finished for our own inventory and so having fewer finished gems ready to offer our clients.

A finished gem which we can ship within a day or two is far more useful to most clients as it saves them the effort and delay of trying to get a gem custom cut. This former policy of hunting through ALL our rough every time someone asked about something tends to form a vicious cycle with fewer and fewer finished gems due to time spent on other things than cutting. Resulting in more and more people needed a gemstone custom cut from the rough (SLOW) because we didn't have what they wanted in stock already. It meant we could help fewer people and many of those we could help were being helped slower than they should have been.

Our attempts to make some clients happy were making many more other clients unhappy. :(

How could I make as many clients happy as possible???

(While staying sane...)

I had quite a bit of mental struggle about how to best handle these seemingly opposed desires, the desire to best serve my clients and also to best honor all the rough gemstones we work with and make them as beautiful as possible. While praying about this an idea came to me which I feel offers the best of both worlds.

My eureka moment, the happiest solution we have found to this challenge so far!

The idea that came to me was that I should preform as much of my rough as I possibly could, getting far more preforms ready than we need for cutting in the near future. By working on an entire lot of rough at a time the admin work to track the gems is reduced significantly since all the rough in a single lot share most of the same relevant details. Also, preforming is far faster than cutting so it is easier to get ahead of our demand in this way since I can "sprint" ahead instead of waiting until we can cut and polish each gem.

If I preform at the same pace we cut at, by the time we get a new batch of gems cut our clients have often purchased just as many gems from us so we are in the same place as before (as far as the number of gems in our inventory is goes). The only way I can see to get ahead of the curve and have more gems to offer our clients is by this strategy of preforming ahead of time. By doing this consistently I do not end up spending much extra time, because I would have to preform the gem rough sooner or later anyway and I don't have to do a lot of extra tracking of individual pieces. All I do is spend the time required to prepare the gem rough sooner rather than later. Also since I am preforming ALL the gems in each parcel I don't need to spend a lot of time picking and choosing between them, I just let each gem take shape at the wheel and reveal what it wants to be gradually as I work it.

This solution is far faster for you!

By having many preforms ready for cutting I know far more precisely what shapes, sizes and cuts our gem rough is likely to yield and so can much more quickly and easily tell you if the one or more of the preforms we have is well suited to what you want. Instead of having to search through all this rough manually I take pictures of the batches of preforms and store them on my computer so I can quickly scan through them and only dig through the batches of preforms that have gems which look like a strong possibility. This saves me time in searching and you time in waiting for an answer from me in what is still a very busy schedule even with this strategic improvement. We are very happy to have found a way to serve more and more of our clients better through offering an ever larger inventory of preforms we can select from to cut, while still not be wasting this natural finite resource which gemstones are by grinding them into something they were not intended to be.

We currently have hundreds of gemstone preforms already finished for us to check through for what you are looking for. I have been focusing mainly on sapphire to start this process since that is what most of our custom cutting to order clients want. But I am still working on this new strategy and preforming quite often to build up our preform inventory so more gems and gem types are added all the time.

(To get an even better idea of how this works see the picture of Australian Sapphire Parti Color rough and preforms below.)

Sapphire rough preformed in preparation for cutting and polishing

A batch of preformed Australian parti color sapphire rough waiting for the perfect client.

Look at the wide range of shapes and colors and how many are unexpected based on the external appearance of the rough!

(This picture is used as an example, but on our computer we have many pictures of the rough we have preformed which we can quickly refer to when we get a client request.)

By doing things in this way we can much more easily tell if we are likely to have a gemstone or gemstones that will work for you or not.

Photo: Sapphires from Australia prepared for cutting by John Dyer & Co.

Want a gem you don't currently see in our inventory? Please use this link to go to our contact page and ask us if one of our hundreds of preforms are suited to you! For example: You want a purple sapphire in a round, cushion or oval shape, we can (assuming we have a preformed gem or gems in that color range) put those into our cutting schedule and see if one of the gems "wants" to be close to what you want.


If we still don't have a preform that will work, but you have months to work on your project, we can also add you to our waiting list. By knowing you are wanting a certain type of gem we are encouraged to preform that gem type sooner rather than later and this generally results in us coming up with something for you faster than we would if it is just left to chance.

Once a preform with good potential for your request has been done we will notify you. Also, if you are first on our waiting list for that specific gem type, size and shape it means you get the first chance at such a gem when it does come up before we release it to the general public.

How long does it take?

Unless we are traveling or at a show we can tell you fairly soon (usually within a week) if we have a gem that will be close to the shape and size you are looking for. Keep in mind that I answers most emails myself and aside from having admin tasks I also need to preform and cut gems so I can't be on the computer all the time.

Once a gem or gems that might work has been identified then it usually takes from one and a half to three months to get it cut and ready for sale as we always have a lot going on (the exact time frame will depend on our current schedule).

If we do NOT have a similar gem to what you want already preformed then we will tell you that and if you want we can put you on our list to notify you if/when a similar gem comes up. There is no time estimate for this though. It can be soon or it might never happen depending on each individual piece of rough we work on and what it "wants to be". But you increase your chances of us finding something for you a lot by being on the waiting list as that impacts our choice of which lots of rough to cut.

Empty Ring Mounting By Stuller

The Ring is NOT the place to start your search.

Rings are manufactured products and can be made to order, re-melted, re-sized and re-shaped. Gems grow in nature and can only be ground smaller, waisting precious natural material which can never be recovered.

Halo Engagement Ring Mounting by Stuller Inc.

Please do not buy the ring before finding the right gem!

Starting with the ring before you find the gem makes it far less likely that you will be able to find a gem that both fits and that you love.

Rings are designed to fit specific shapes and sizes of gems, usually there is only a very small amount of leeway in the size of the gem the ring will fit. The likelihood that the rough I have cuts a gem exactly the size and shape that your ring was made for is very unlikely.

Metal by its very nature is intended to be melted, forged, soldered, welded and generally shaped, alloyed, added to and customized around a gem. You don't have to lose much metal at all to cast or fabricate it into a completely different shape than what it started out as. So to me by definition metal should be adapted to the gem, and not the gem to the metal!

Since there is a significant amount of cost in the remaking of a piece of jewelry it is better to only pay once for the fabrication of the piece instead of buying a finished piece and then having to have it re-made to fit the gem you end up purchasing.

So, what I encourage all my clients to do is get the best and most beautiful gem they can and then find a good way to create the design for the jewelry around it in a way that is appealing to them. The gem is the "heart" of the piece of jewelry and a good gemstone heart is key to having a beautiful piece of jewelry!

Are you looking to save money on the ring?


empty ring shanks are a good way to give you the flexibilty to fit a gem into the style of band you like and still save money
Empty Ring Shanks Waiting for Heads and Gems

One strategy to save money on making a ring for a custom gem is to buy a pre-made shank in the style you like. There are thousands of these shanks available from different suppliers. And a head to hold the gem can either be ordered or custom made and then soldered or welded to the shank, this reduces the overall amount of labor needed to build a ring around a gem.

Empty ring shank renderings courtesy of Stuller Inc. and available from your local jeweler.

If your concern is saving money on the jewelry there are some tips I can give you based on the design style you like and the shape of the gem. Fully custom made jewelry is more expensive in general than pre-manufactured styles, but you can buy pre-made shanks that do not have a "head" which will allow for a wide range of sizes and shapes of the gem in the center and then all you have to do is buy the appropriate head or have only the head part custom made. By using pre-made components like that a lot labor and money can be saved. There are other tips too and if you want please feel free to ask me about them!

So, sorry to ramble on with such a long winded explanation for you, but please take all this into account and decide on the gem you want before buying the ring you want it to go in.

Sincerely yours,

John Dyer


Other related subjects:

Learn more about John Dyer Gems

What is the right size of gem to buy?

Videos on gem cutting and how to recognize a well cut gem.

Gemstones for sale, buy beautifully cut gemstones in our online catalog
Buy well cut gemstones from our large online catalog of fantasy and precision cut gems.

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