Name: Michael Guastadisegni
Background: Guastadisegni, 42, was 14 years old when his family moved from Italy to Chicago. He studied mechanical engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and studied gem-cutting on his own, taking Chicago Park District classes and seeking out gemologists to ask technical questions. In 1974 he began cutting gems for jewelers, and in 1980 he opened an office on Jeweler`s Row in the Loop. Guastadisegni lives in Palos Hills with his wife and their two daughters.
Years as a gem cutter: 16
I`M A WHOLESALER. MOST OF MY customers are jewelers and jewelry stores. I work on the stones on a piece of jewelry a customer has brought to them. Once in a while customers come in off the street, often with a rough piece, maybe an opal they bought in another country, and I`ll slice the opal and cut it the size and shape they need. The question I get the most from the public is,
”Are you going to switch my diamond?” I always tell them, if I do something like that, I lose a customer. But I understand when they want to wait while I work on a stone.
A job came in yesterday from a jeweler, and I recognized the ring even though I didn`t remember the customer`s name. The ruby has a chip, and so I will refacet the ruby, remove the broken section and minimize the loss of weight. That`s important. You don`t want to begin with a two-carat stone with a little chip in it and wind up with 1 1/2 carats. Many times people will bring in a stone, say a sapphire or an amethyst, that needs to be repolished. It`s not as simple as it sounds. You have to actually regrind every facet at exactly the same angle as the original stone was.
When you cut or polish a stone, you grind it down on one wheel, then go to the next wheel, and that removes the scratches of the second wheel, and so on. It`s like stepping stones, or a saw, with each sandbelt cutting the wood finer and finer. If you`re not happy when you`re done, you go back a couple of steps until the job is perfect. Some things you can`t do on machinery. Then I take the stone and my diamond-cutting tools and do the job by hand.
My power equipment is a little bit dangerous when it`s running. You have to understand the machinery. They all need water dripping on them so the stones will stay cool, or they will fracture. And the diamond saw is so sharp it could cut a finger off. Sometimes the skin on my thumb or fingers bleeds because they get too close to the wheel. The diamond dust is sharp. But that`s okay. It`s part of the job. The skin grows back.
Lately people call me for crystals, and when I say, ”What kind?” they say, ”I thought there was only one, the quartz.” I tell them, ”No, you can even have diamond or emerald crystals, raw diamonds or emeralds.” Then there are people who feel that everything that glitters is diamonds. One customer had crystals her father had told her, on his deathbed, were diamonds he had stolen from a mine in Iran years ago. But they were quartz crystals, worth about 10 cents apiece.
I get my stones from sources in magazines like Lapidary Journal. I sometimes go to the gem shows. You have to know what you are buying. I get a lot of customers after the shows are over, and I give them the bad news or the good news. Maybe they bought $300 worth of stones but they don`t match very well. I tell them, ”You can still use them, maybe as earrings and a pendant, instead of in a row, in a ring, where you can see the difference in quality.” People do get burned. A jeweler pays $500 for a packet of emeralds, but then it takes $500 and then some to cut them. So he`s really spent $1,000. Then what is he going to recover?
I get a tremendous amount of mistakes. Accidents do happen. Jewelers sometimes scratch a stone. Recently a jeweler chipped a cameo, and I redid it so it still fit inside the pendant. One time a jeweler novice put too much heat on a 30-carat blue topaz, and he cracked it in half. I told him if I could fix it I could walk on water. It was a cracked stone. Something like that is impossible to fix.
You have to have the proper knowledge of each stone. You can`t cut a topaz the same as a diamond. If you do, it will rip the topaz apart. You have to use a different machine, different pressure. You have to know exactly what stone you`re working with. People know sapphires are blue, but the problem is there are white sapphires, yellow sapphires, red sapphires. So, is the stone a sapphire or is it a garnet? You have to know before you begin to cut it. A lot of jewelry is made from gemstones like turquoise, opal, mother-of-pearl, abalone shell. You have to be very careful with these stones.
One time a jeweler, a gold specialist, brought me a very old ring a customer had left for repair. I told him the ring needed more work to protect the stone better, and the customer told him: ”Who cares? It`s just an old ring my grandmother gave me.” I said to tell her she had a blue sapphire worth $2,000 wholesale, nothing to sneeze at. People bring me jewelry they bought in tourist places, and the stones are not what they were told they are. One man thought he had a two-carat Alexandrite, one of the rarest stones on Earth, but it was corundum, a man-made stone worth about $10.
Sometimes people find fossils, crystals or pretty stones in their back yards or in their travels. One girl brought in about 75 pounds of materials. Most of it was massive quartz, boulders, like they break up and put between the railroad tracks. But some of the other pieces were natural onyx, and I was able to slice those for her for gifts she could give her family for knickknacks.
It`s nice cutting gemstones. It`s like the ugly duckling. The stone looks like nothing, but every time you cut it, it gives a different look to it, and it is prettier. Once you`re finished, it`s like a beautiful swan. I enjoy the happiness when people are appreciative of the job. I like to experiment. I cut a $5,000 ruby one day, a $2,500 opal the next day. Then I might cut a stone someone picked up on the beach. In every case, even the last, you have to know what you`re doing to make it beautiful.
