The New Signature Oval by Jonathan "Rhino" Weingarten

The New AGS Ideal Cut Oval by Jonathan "Rhino" Weingarten

Greetings and welcome to our tutorial on the New Signature Oval by your's truly.  Over the course of the past years I've been developing and re-inventing a number of new cuts since the August Vintage products.  Our new oval is the first to be released and instead of doing half a job, I've taken the shape to a whole new level not yet seen or witnessed in our industry before.  While we think of a good name to trademark, first some introductory info... 

In the following video I explain how our new signature oval came to be and use one of the brightest commonly cut ovals I could find to compare it too.  I show the oval in

• office lighting,
• spot lighting and
• natural daylight. 

Re-Inventing the Oval Brilliant Cut

Before the days of "ideal cut" diamonds and when education on the subject of cut quality was extremely limited, consumers who were buying diamonds would generally see the following graphic and do the best they could to purchase the diamond that was closest to the "ideal" standard they learned about.

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The days of line art drawings have come and gone and real science has impacted our industry in an overwhelming way as we are now able to measure the percentage of how much light enters and exits and know the best angles to achieve maximum brightness, fire & sparkle in a diamond.  Below are ray tracing examples of various proportioned rounds.

 
I'd like to draw your attention a little closer to the above graphics because when it comes to fancy shaped diamonds like the oval brilliant cut, not one but two of these graphics come to play when it comes to ovals on the current market.  There is the profile to consider along the width as well as the profile to consider along it's length.

​When we look at an oval along it's width measurement we're seeing the profile, primarily of it's belly.  This is the area where well cut ovals will display the best light return.

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​The problem with oval brilliant cut diamonds are three fold.​

1. Oval brilliant cuts, even supposedly the "best" cuts are by nature too shallow when you leave the belly area and begin observing from the mid section up.

When we look at the profile of an oval along it's length we can't help but notice how similar it is to the shallow cut round from our first graphics. The first graphic on the left is a shallow cut round the 2nd on the right is the profile of an oval along its length.  It's even more shallow than the "shallow round".

     2. These areas which are too shallow suffer from extraneous light leakage coupled with drawing too many reflections from dull areas in our environment which causes two ill optical effects.  Those being ...

• severe loss of brilliance.​

• color absorption

​Severe loss of brilliance. When we run typical ovals through ASET analysis we observe the severe loss of brilliance particularly noted on the upper and lower parts of the diamond.  You can see this clearly in the first 3 graphics below as indicated by all the extraneous white and green areas. The new signature oval by AV Inc. (on the far right) has solid reds/blues in those areas ensuring the diamond is grabbing and reflecting light at these most crucial areas.  Ie. no brilliance lost where it typically has always been lost.

Step #1 was giving proper depth to the oval along it's length, much like an ideal cut round or square has.

3. Color Absorption.  When we get into the optical sciences behind diamond beauty it is a scientific fact that the more that light has to travel through a gem stone, the more color it absorbs.  The same is especially true for diamond.  In our ray tracing models we were able to observe how much a beam of light has to travel before it exits the diamond.  You can see it in the ray tracing but more importantly when we observe this phenomena in real life it makes diamonds look more yellow than what they are actually are.  Below is the profile model of a "good" oval and you can see how many times the beam of light criss-crosses in the interior of the diamond before it exits. Not good. In the video below you'll see the visible effects of this phenomena of an E color alongside of an I color where the I color appears WHITER than the E when observed from above in natural day lighting!

Here is a graphic demonstrating this phenomena.   The oval on the left is a conservatively graded GIA "G" color.  Next to it is an Elyque H color.  When conducting a survey on this very image the majority of viewers thought the diamond on the left was as low as J/K/L and even M color. There is no questioning the Elyque. The image speaks for itself.

The bow tie effect.  Oval, pear and marquise brilliant cuts are notorious for having a bow tie effect. Most of the time when consumers shop for these cuts they accept the fact that they're going to get a leaky diamond, less brilliant so the primary thing they focus on getting is one of these shapes that has the least visible bow tie.  This "bow tie" effect is virtually unavoidable in modern oval brilliant cuts and exists as either faint, medium, strong or very strong depending on the proportions.​  What causes the bowtie?  It is the reflection of your own head and body shadow reflecting across the belly of the diamond and generally on a pavilion main facet. The accompanying graphic is a fantastic example.  In commonly cut ovals however, the more you eliminate the bowtie usually means more light leakage in the diamond which is almost counter intuitive as you're sacrificing one bad optical effect for another equally bad optical effect. 

Not so with Opulence Ovals.  If you are looking for an Oval diamond that will

• Eliminate the bowtie and replace it with bright white reflections of light.
• Eliminate the "mush" caused by light leakage on the north/south sides of the diamond and 
• Eliminate the resultant color absorption making your diamond look more yellow than what it is actually graded ... 

Then you are a perfect candidate for the new AGS Ideal Cut Opulence Oval.