Chameleon diamond: yellow when heated

[Garry H (Cut Nut)]

We had a pair of colourless diamonds in to be worked on.
Both these diamonds when heated turned a very pretty canary yellow. they must have come from the same rough.

Unfortuantely I did not get time to do further testing on them as I just got out of hospital from a shoulder arthroscopy. I guess they would have been blue fluoro.

We often see pale pink argyle diamonds become more intense pink for 1/2 a day when we heat them (buyer beware), but we rarely see anything like this - especially in 2 stones.

 

[akmiss]

Cool! Did they return to being colorless?

 

[bling addict]

Hi Garry
Those are very cool stones. Do they require a very strong heat to change colour, or would they turn yellow say if you were outside in the sun? Also where would you look if you wanted to buy a chameleon that went from colourless to yellow? The only ones I''ve seen (online - never IRL) are usually green to yellow.
Hope your shoulder feels better soon.

 

[isis~goddess]

that scares the living crap out of me.

 

[tberube]

Yipes! Can''t that damage a diamond?

 

[Garry H (Cut Nut)]

We heat diamonds red hot all the time - but we coat them in a borax or boracic acid paste that stops the oxygem making them burn up.

Yes - this was heated very hot - steel would be looking like a birthday cake sparkler.

Of course they go back, as soon as they cool - you can see it in the sequence of photo''s taken over about 3 seconds - otherwise i would not tell you - i would just get rich ;-0