Realistic faceting setup budget

Hi guys. Soon I'll be in the market for a facetting machine. I'd like to buy new and I have the wife starting to agree to a budget of around $3500. Is this realistic for everything I need or should I be trying my luck to stretch the budget?
With sapphire bend and beautiful blue sapphire only a stones throw away it would be good to have something creative to do when it's snowing and freezing

You should be able to get a reasonable machine and a set of basic laps for that Matt.

I'm still a novice and familiar only with the VJ machine - which is a top of the range machine and will set you back about $5500 for the top shelf version - but I think you can get a brand new Graves or Facetron for what you are looking at spending (Graves I think was around $2300 and facetron around $3000 from memory). I'll leave it to more experienced people to deliver judgement about these machines and others but I think with practice you will be able to cut good stones on any reasonable machine.

And you definately want a decent set of laps - I have a state of the art faceting machine but it's really only as good as the laps you put on it. The laps I inherited from elsewhere were good laps in their day but their day was long ago and they are pretty worn and slowing me down. If you decide you can afford a set of proper sintered laps then they will last a very long time. Others are much less expensive but will wear out sooner or later.

I have a friend who has a GF3 for sale. It needs tuning which I can do. I can outfit with laps and my special alloy polishing disc and polish etc Pm me if your interested.

Thanks guys, unfortunately not in position at the moment, I need my business Es in Sydney to sell so I can afford it, hopefully by the end of winter, then I can permently move to black springs and not just weekends.

Matturbo said:

Thanks guys, unfortunately not in position at the moment, I need my business Es in Sydney to sell so I can afford it, hopefully by the end of winter, then I can permently move to black springs and not just weekends.

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I would gladly move to a little cabin in the bush near Rubyvale and spend my days digging and my nights faceting - but I know someone who would have something to say about that

It took me over 5 years to convince the wife to move bush, now she's there permently and I'm back and forth from sydney , she's been back once in 3 months and got back with the shits, definitely a country girl now :lol:

I never thought I'd convince here to live out of town but here we are - ok, it's only a 20 minute drive to town but still that was a big step

Now I just have to help her get over her issue of loving the sparkly things that come out of the dirt but hating the dirt itself to the point where she absolutely refuses to come fossicking. We're going up to Mareeba the week after next to visit her family. Father in law is keen to head out to Mount Gibson or Mount Surprise chasing topaz but the chances of getting her out there are about zero. I keep telling her that a stone I facet and set means so much more if she found it herself but she's not budging so far

I forgot to take a photo of my wifey on Sunday. She was stoked with the 2ct saphire a mate and I found but was quite content sitting in the moon chair reading a book. But for the first time she was asking questions and watched me with the WB for a bit, progress me thinks