With grateful acknowledgment to John Pollard, Sergey Sivovolenko, AGSL and GIA Laboratories for valuable resources and input. Graphics produced with DiamCalc software by OctoNus. Note: This article pertains only to 'superideal' diamonds, meaning those with commonly agreed 'ideal' proportions and a high level of o...
Visible Effects of Painting & Digging on Superideal Diamonds CLICK HERE TO VIEW POST
Coming back from holidays, and trying to catch up with Pricescope, I saw a lot of discussion and agreement about diamond-cutting being an art, and hence diamond cutters to be artists. At first, I felt like I had to disagree with this notion. I consider ourselves not to be artists, but craftsmen, designers if y...
Can diamond-cutting be considered Art? CLICK HERE TO VIEW POST
Labs grading mistakes are a diamantaires favorite topic of conversation; are mistakes myths or reality? We aim to find out. If major labs give the same diamond 2 or more grade differences, this is more than a borderline difference of opinion. We want your help to find examples (like this one). We will send ston...
Diamond Grading Labs – A Plan for Peer Review CLICK HERE TO VIEW POST
When one looks for solutions to problems it is best to look for the simplest possible one. There may be more than one legitimate way to solve a problem or to accomplish a task, but the simplest method that does the job correctly is the one to ultimately choose. It is not wrong to try various methods, but when it com...
Making the case for Imagem diamond grading CLICK HERE TO VIEW POST
Diamonds should be a blessing to all they touch, from the mine to the consumer, and everyone involved in the chain should be doing their best to insure that this happens. For the most part, they are. Diamonds and the related industries continue to provide a living for hundreds of thousands of people in Africa, India...
The beginning – assessing the value of rough This February, we were offered a very nice parcel of Botswanan rough. The size of the stones ranged from 2.60 up to 4.60 Carats, 42 stones in total. With most of the stones being makeables, thus returning only one polished stone, we were looking at the possibil...
The intricacies and risks of diamond-cutting CLICK HERE TO VIEW POST
Introduction At the start of 2006 GIA began, for the first time ever, issuing cut grades for round colorless diamonds. Evidence suggests this system, that was meant to help, could actually disadvantage many retailers and consumers. Background GIA began a computer ray tracing Cut Study in 1989. In 2001...
Simple but Ugly Oval Figure 1 shows a 4:3 oval (e.g. 8x6mm) cut using the same indexes (azimuths) as a standard round brilliant and also the same slopes for the main facets (the half-facet slopes must be modified for desired depth and proper meets). The pavilion, at the upper end, shows a trace of end-facet ...
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