I seem to have experienced every mistake in every way possible from dopping to transfer from pavilion to crown - my last stone. Had a three wing pavilion and touched two but not the third and suspect too much pressure cocked the 2 pt epoxy by some small amount. I have finished a dozen stones or more cut and trying to learn how to get points perfect or the girdle straight…
You might need to make something like this Alignment Tool
I had to build one to align mine, made a huge diffence on transfers.
I feel your frustration! My solution has been to use a standard slotted transfer block, Graves, I think. But the trick is to use a Guiui Dopper made for Ultra Tec. I just finished dropping 28 stones from 20 mm down to 5 mm attached with ZAP methylcyanoacrylate. The real simplification was the use of poster putty on the top of the Guiui. It is very tacky and with a little practice you can easily set the stone on the top of the dopper and lower the new dop down to contact the temporary table. After doing it a few times you get pretty expert at leveling the table in contact with the flat tip of the dop and then applying a drop or so of Zap. That takes some learning too, but the results are wonderful as opposed to the error-prone method you and I have used. I have images, but no way to send them to you. I am writing a guide for a friend starting his faceting career so have wished to illustrate the article. My email is <spherecraft@gmail.com. There is a lot more to this but this will get you going to the right track. Bob Ritchie
A few comments…I am not exactly sure what problem you experienced…your description isn’t clear to me. However, I would suggest you use either a plain superglue (CA glue) bond or a hybrid wax/CA glue method. I think that’s been covered here before or you can find it on line somewhere or ask here and I will describe again. As far as zeroing the cheater, you don’t have to worry with that if you establish your index by putting a girdle flat down on the lap after transfer at the index you want. You try to polish the girdle flat a little and then use your cheater to get the flat to polish all across and you have gotten your index set. If you are having problems centering the rough, a GUIUI dop or one of Marsh Howard’s (Lightning Laps) Magdops will help with that. The Magdop is a lot cheaper than the GUIUI. HTH, royjohn
One lil tip when your shaping your gem try to make the pavilion round and even while keeping the crown the shape you want it to be heart pear etc whole your rough shaping try a twist of the wrist and it will round out it’s self and then when you put your gem on the dob try to center it the best and center as you can to make even meet at the points faucets hope this helped you out lol