Diamond Setting Tools for the Perfectionist

By knowing how body obstruction of light (body contrast) affects a stone, one can adjust the position of the stone when mounting to get a desirable result.

Body contrast should be taken into account especially with fancy cuts, where head obstruction of light (head contrast) is negligible or nonexistent, the body contrast compensates for the lack of head contrast.

Body contrast is beneficial to very bright stones that display little or no head contrast.

When tilting a stone body, contrast takes over the fading head contrast, maintaining some contrast.

A stone with excessive body contrast will look bright when one wears a white shirt and will look dark with a dark color shirt

Head and body contrast may be BENEFICIAL or DETRIMENTAL to a stone depending on their location, percentage, concentration and distribution on the surface area.

To mount earrings, body contrast (in this case a shoulder), should be taken into consideration. 80 degrees (A above) being an average angle may be applied to most stones.

To be more precise in maximizing brightness, the client's posture and the stone's position must be measured or tailored.

The body reflector is suitable for assymetrical stones, where some areas show too much body obstruction of light. See stone comparison picture at the top of this page.

For fancy stones move them down or up to get a better result or choose a stone with better brilliance.

Choose the areas the show the least contrast, the least pink with DBL-17 & 19, mark it with fine marker and place that area against the shoulder. The reverse may apply to very white looking stones.