I know what you mean. In my circle, a one carat is considered huge, but to ME, its too small. That's why I opted for a 1 1/2 Diamonique. Perfect size for me, until I got used to my 2 carat Ashas.

I second this! 1 ct is my sweet spot for rings.

i want to see pics and video of that cushion, it looks amazing!!

I have kept up with the Friday updates since the beginning but things have changed a bunch of times and I don't know the LATEST on the time frame for the Amora H&A to be for sale for
1. Customer's in countries not shown in the patent protection listing
2. In the US (last I read a decision will happen Spring 2012 right?)
Less ~ I know you have a lot to do to get full production up and running but are you going to do small batches before you get all the new machines whizzing away so you can sell to say... Mexico and the like? Can you address the latest timeline on this Friday's update?

How is the patent situation going? Any new news on it working out BEFORE 2015 in the USA?

It's friday~ friday~ *dance*

Hi all,
Hope you had a good week, and since its Friday (!)...time for some updates.

We were able to get a lot of hardness testing done this week, so I have some new info on that.

First - the hardness of the Amora gem is actually harder than we reported. The 23% harder than sapphire was from testing a non-gem quality piece. Since we wanted to get the final answer on Amora vs. C&C Moissanite, we went ahead and tested on a true Amora gem piece...and so the final hardness of the Amora gem as it will be produced...

26.7% harder than sapphire.

The next question to address was...how hard is C&C Moissanite? To do that, we had to sacrifice a cut stone and we used a 7mm round for that.

The answer is...an effective tie with it and Amora Gem. To do the testing, you end up running 10 actual indentation tests, and then average the results. However, there is a +/- error bar associated with the results, and the results for Amora Gem and the C&C Moissanite were within the 'error bar' so neither one gets to claim being harder than the other.

So, effectively, both Amora Gem and C&C Moissanite are ~27% harder than sapphire and both are effectively the same in hardness.

The last question we wanted to have answered was, does the Amora enhancement to a C&C Moissanite affect it's hardness...and unfortunately that test did not get run this week. But it is scheduled to run tonight actually (hardness testing is always done at night to minimize external vibrations) and thus, I hope we can answer that question next week!

Anyway, nice to have some additional info and we'll be updating the main Amora pages with that.

With regards to Amora production...pricing out everything continues and we just have one last quote waiting. A bit of good news at last was that one specific part has come down in price by $30k…a drop in the bucket overall, but still nice to see that trend instead of just everything coming in higher than expected.

The tentative plan, due to the rather overwhelming cost, is to move towards some limited production by not setting up with the 'optimal' configuration, but one that gets some basic production underway.

The tentative timeline for the limited production is thus late Summer at this point, but could move forward or backward as things progress. But, some people have asked for the latest rough dates and that would be the current best guesstimate.

Note that we have not had any further news from the USPTO in regards to the US patent invalidation, and so production does not necessarily equal availability for orders shipping to the US.

The Amora cushion H&A is currently at the videographers, and I tentatively hope to have those ready to show (video and photo) as part of next Friday's update.

With regards to other BTD news:

1 - Custom cutting will open up next week for Avarra sapphires, emeralds and rubies.
2 - We're working on a new Asscher cut yellow diamond that should finish up between 1.6 and 1.8ct, so a larger stone overall.
3 - We have a very large amount of Asha H&A rounds currently in progress.
4 - We're hoping to restock on Asha studs, and begin offering all styles with the Protektor back systems. The price on that option has actually held steady while the pricing for the friction backs has gone up. As a result, it makes sense to offer by default the Protektor systems for a bit more money but one that offers a lot more relative bang for the buck.

Hopefully next week we'll have the Amora H&A cushion video and photo to show, so hope to see you then.

Have a great weekend!
Less

yay!! thanks for the update =) good to know that moissys are around 30% harder than sapphires. Please let amora be reasonably priced... can't wait!!

thanks for the update Less! Do you have any plans for antique cuts in the future?

Less when are the Amora 1 carat rounds going to come back? I emailed but customer service said they don't know

Antique cuts are pretty low on the priority list. The first one we would do though I think would be Jonathans AVC, as he had requested we discuss this some time back.

Hope that helps,
Less