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Fracture Filling Clarity Enhancement - A question for the Experts

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pyramid

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I do not intend to buy a clarity enhanced diamond but was wondering if all of the filler in the stone carried a color flash to it or is it just the area of the filling which is marked by the color flash effect and that the filler which is added has no color dopiant added in its mix?

What I am saying is, has all the mixture had dopiant added to it to make it color flash or just the edges (seams) between the filler and the crack. Or does the color flash only show where the two elements meet i.e. filler and natural diamond even though the filler is the same material throughout?
 

gunsuka

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You can see color flashes anywhere the filler has been added, not just the edges. If a large feather has been filled, you will be able to see flashes of color all over where the filler has taken effect in the feather.


I'm not sure if I read your message correctly, but I don't think the companies who do this treatment add anything to make the color flashes. This is a bi-product of the treatment, if there was a way to add the filler without any color flashes you can be certain someone would be doing it.
 

valeria101

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Yeah. It is an optical phenomenon you are talking about. To me, these fillings look like "oil on water" - a result of the different refraction index of the filler compared to the surrounding diamond. It is hard to think about these as comparable with the usual "flash" of the diamond itself, and the effect can only be seen upon very close inspection.

Normally no color is added to these filers: at their best these should perfectly blend with the colorless stone around. However, adding color to diamonds by fracture filling with, say, pink stuff did happen. This kind of "enhancement" is not frequent and (as you may imagine) it is easy to spot: just an uninspired fraud.
 

pyramid

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Thank you gunsuka and valeria101 for your replies.

Valeria101 you are saying it is difficult to detect and looks like oil on water but from the photos in diamond books the flash effect seems easy to detect, albeit it is probably shown through microscope photos. I read the color flash effect would change color depend upon how the diamond was rocked. Is this just for experts to see by microscope then and a common person with a 10x loupe would not be able to determine it?
 

DiamondExpert

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One of the most well known fracture fillers is Yehuda Inc. You can read here about the process and its visibility

http://www.yehuda.com/process.asp

http://www.yehuda.com/flasheffect.asp

Basically, the material used to fill fractures (of necesity they must reach the surface of the stone) is almost the same Ref. Index as diamond, but is visible at the correct angle - showing a "flask effect" (best seen at almost "edge on" the fracture) because of a slight difference in dispersion of the material relative to diamond (sometimes called "dispersion staining").


The filler is present in such small amount that it doesn't add weight to the stone.
 

oldminer

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Oil on water has a rainbow-like effect, not the flash effect seen in filled diamonds. The diamond effect seen is from the glass-in fill border where it meets the diamond. Generally ones observes a single color in one direction and a different color from another, but NOT a rainbow. A rainbow indicates strain, or stress, but not filler.
 
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