Treated Diamonds

Treated Diamonds.

Treated Diamonds started when the Diamonds industry started, many color and clarity treatments were done to ¨improve¨ Diamonds defects in order to increase their value and attractiveness.

The Color Enhancement originally started with a simple coat (a thin layer of chemicals or plastic) that enhance the Diamond color, With time an technology advances a new color enhancement started called Irradiation, which is a permanent color change ( using radiation).

Now a days the most common color treatment is HPHT which stands for High Pressure High Temperature, in the 1990s scientists discovered that using High Pressure combined with High Temperature (similar conditions to the Diamond formation) can result in making certain low color Diamonds Pink, Blue, Green and Yellow, and most commonly Broun to Colorless.

With time a few clarity enhancement techniques started to appear in the market the most common once being LD and fracture filling.

LD stands for Laser Drilling, which is a treatment used to remove dark inclusions, by making a hole from the Diamond surface to the dark inclusion in order to burn it, the treatment leaves a tiny drill hole (can be spotted with a loup, a tub is seen from the Diamond surface to the center, or by looking at the facets carefully searching for an opening in one of them).

LD can be done in any part of the Diamond, however the most common once are inserted from the Diamonds Table all the way to the dark carbon.

Fracture filling is a treatment done by injecting molten glass substance into a visible fracture in a Diamond, this treatment is very effective for the Diamond clarity, however many routine cleaning methods can damage the treatment.

 Treated Diamonds MUST be sold with disclosure of the treatment, it is illegal to sell treated Diamonds without it.

 Buying treated diamond is like buying gold filled jewelry, it looks good but not recommended.

Treated Diamonds are never ever ever an investment in any way.  

2010 going to 2011

The year of 2010 started with some anxiety, the prices of rough diamonds dropped, the supply went down a lot and it didn’t look to promising, the demand slowed due to the weak economic status of many people.

Surprisingly as the year went on more movement was happening than expected, some new Asian markets opened and the USA market didn’t disappoint either, the year of 2010 can be summaries as a great year of recovery.

Looking for the positive side of the strong economic problem, we can point out that some very interesting markets where discovered, some markets that no one ever gave any attention are now taking a big part in the Diamond industry.

 Another interesting thing that toke place after the economic problem is that the diamond dealers the survived can now face almost anything, they became much stronger and all the small competition was erased, the people that are now in the market are very very strong.

Diamond simulants.

Diamond simulants are a an imitation of a natural Diamond.
Simulants can be natural or made in a lab, and a successful one can be very attractive.
Diamond simulants take a big part in the jewelry industry, for 2 main reasons;
1) Cost of production.
2) Quantity of production.
There are many Diamond simulants in the market this days, and new lines of Synthetic Diamonds ( same chemical composition as a natural Diamond, but grown in a lab)
There are many ways to recognize simulants but don't think that after reading a little online you can detect one, however there are 2 tests that 99% of all simulants fail.
1) Diamond is the strongest natural gem, that hardness makes it possible to obtain extremely sharp facet junction, a simulant on the other hand has a rounded facet junction, and generally shows visible scratches and abrasions.

 look carefully at the facet junction, in a real natural diamond the facet junction is much sharper and better connected.

2) Most Diamond simulants are doubly refractive.

The lines that you see in this syntactic moissanite are a resolute of the light interaction with the simulant.
Diamonds have a very high Refractive index, which is "A measure of the change in the speed and angle of light as it passes from one material to another".
In a natural Diamond the light beam never bends, in most simulants it does.