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Home > Education > Asha� Article
Asha� Scientific Article

Gem experts tricks to spotting fakes

Many people who purchase a diamond simulant don't necessarily want others
to know that what they are wearing is not a diamond. Thus, part of the goal
of Asha� was to learn how and why various simulants could be spotted as
fakes.  Thus, we continuously showed various simulants to customers,
scientists and of course jewelers and gem experts with our long-standing
"Asha� challenge".  Based on that feedback we went through 3 different
iterations of Asha�, now culminating in version3.  

If you examine a fine, well-cut diamond closely, you will see that the look it
has might best be summarized as "sparkling liquid-mercury".  If you then
compare most common simulants, you can see how and where they fall short
pretty easily.  

Moissanite has exceptional sparkle, but its heavy green tinting (especially
the larger the gem is) and blurry look when looking directly into the stone will
fail to convince most experts thats its a diamond.  It may pass as a poor
grade diamond if not inspected closely however.  Moissanite also does not
have the internal whitish-silver shimmer that is meant by the "sparkling liquid-
mercury" analogy above.  However, when used in smaller size rounds, it's a
good simulant.  The smaller the stone, the harder it is to see the details, and
thus the blurry look and tinting tend to not be as visible.  

Within the CZ world, most jewelers told us that typical CZ is spotted easily
because it is either "too white" or "too glassy" to be a diamond. Again, it's
very dependent on the quality of cz, but lower grade cz can vary in color from
a dull gray to a plasticy white.  The other easy test is to take a low quality
cz into the sunlight and observe it - it will not sparkle as much as diamond,
especially on the underside (if the underside is visible).  Like moissanite,
though, even low grade cz is a good simulant for small sizes (2mm, 3mm),
again simply because the eye cannot make out as many details in the smaller
sizes.  

Thus, part of the evolution of Asha� was to ensure that the cz crystal
grown had the right 'mercury-like' shimmer that fine diamond has, as it was
the color that tended to give away common cz.  After achieving that with
version 1, we then found out other tricks that diamond experts used to spot
whether a given gem was diamond or simulant.  There were several, but
most were related to the manner of cut employed. Basically, diamond is a
very expensive substance, and thus when cut, especially for larger stones,
diamond cutters tended to ensure that the extra details in cutting were
taken care of.  In most cz's, they were not.  

Most jewelers would evaluate color first, then if it passed that, the next
step would be to examine the cut to determine if it was a simulant or real.
Version2 of Asha� addressed some of the cutting issues, and with version3,
we went all the way with the round cut to cutting it in the same fashion as
the very best diamonds, namely a Hearts and Arrows cut.  Fewer than 1 in
1000 diamonds will have this level of cutting employed, and its rarely seen
on a simulant, so with version3 Asha�, experts no longer had any visual
clues to look for in order to ascertain if the Asha� simulant was diamond or
Asha�.  For version3, our cutters had to spend approximately 8 times as
long cutting the Asha� as before, in order to meet the necessary
parameters of a hearts and arrows cut.  In confirmation of that, version3
Asha� was finally able to fool the gem expert (who had never been fooled
before by any simulant) our professor of mineralogy had relied on for
feedback as we developed the Asha� gem. 

One other obvious trick used by most people of course is simply the type of
jewelry employed!  If you had a $10,000 diamond, would you put it in a
cheap 10k, hastily assembled ring?  Of course you wouldn't, yet if you view
most low grade cz's, they end up in very cheap jewelry mountings.  External
clues like that also impact on the believability of any simulant. Thus, all the
jewelry we utilize at BetterThanDiamond  are the highest quality mountings,
exactly the same as would be used for any natural diamond.

Article still in progress...

References:
"Crystal chemistry and refractivity", Howard Jaffe

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