Help with Fire & Eye Clean

[KT1808]

Hi everyone,

I am new to this forum. I am looking for a diamond for my engagement ring. After reseraching about diamond. I am happy to go with Whiteflash ACA range.

I am looking at a G colour and SI1 Clarity. WF have determine it to be eye clean. My concern is that it could be eye clean from top view but can see inclusions from the side view as I am considering the Solataire setting with 6 Prongs. Should I go up to a VS2 and get a smaller diamond?

My other question is how do we determine the fire type? After reading about fire. I think I prefer bold fire flashes. How do I know from a certificate that the diamond will give bold and not pin? In your opinion is Pin fire nicer than Bold?


Thankyou

 

[PolarBear2006]

If WF has determined it to be eye clean, I would take their word for it, and if it came and wasn't, you always have the option of returning it.

If you ignore what stores tell you, going to a VS2 does increase your chances of getting a eye clean but does not guarantee it, many stones are VS2 and are not eye clean.

As for fire, you cannot tell "fire types" from a cert alone. You would need a video of the particular diamond to be able to see fire. However, that being said, fire can be predicted from better proportions and symmetry, so if you pick a well cut diamond with excellent polish, you should be pleased with the display of fire.

 

[JDDN]

Have WF pull the stone for you and they will assess it from all angles and they will absolutely tell you if you can see any inclusions from the side or pavilion. They are great that way.

For fire, or dispersion or colored light return, strictly speaking you want a small table and a high crown. 54-55% table and around a 34.9-35 degree crown. Fire comes out in spot lighting, which is not a common everyday lighting situation people are in in normal circumstances.

A diamond with ideal proportions that doesn't meet the above (strict) criteria will still have dispersion though and will be beautiful.


https://www.pricescope.com/wiki/diamonds/diamond-brilliance-fire-scintillation


http://www.prosumerdiamonds.com/character-diamond/

 

[gr8leo87]

For bold fire flashes you need shorter LGFs along with an ideal cut. You can ask your vendor to find a diamond with a slightly shorter LGF than is average for a super ideal.

If you want old cut style bold flashes you don't get them in Modern brilliant.

 

[JDDN]

Hm, I missed that you wanted bold over pin flashes of fire. Like gr8leo said bold flashes are more a flavor of old cuts. Neither one is nicer than the other, it's all a matter of personal preference. If you can compare an old cut to a MRB in person, that will help you decide which look you prefer. Try looking at both in different lighting environments.

 

[KT1808]

Thanks everyone.

Is 77% LGL considered average or shorter?

 

[gr8leo87]

Re: Help with Fire & Eye Clean

Thanks everyone.

Is 77% LGL considered average or shorter?

Its about average for hearts and arrows stones and not too fat and certainly not thin.

 

[MarionC]

Just had a thought for your research. On the "Jewels by Grace" website she has all sorts of cuts for sale, including very old diamonds all the way to a BG Signature diamond. Since there there are multiple videos for each stone [some loose, some in rings], you might gain more information about the various types of flashes.

 

[WinkHPD]

Hi everyone,

I am new to this forum. I am looking for a diamond for my engagement ring. After reseraching about diamond. I am happy to go with Whiteflash ACA range.

I am looking at a G colour and SI1 Clarity. WF have determine it to be eye clean. My concern is that it could be eye clean from top view but can see inclusions from the side view as I am considering the Solataire setting with 6 Prongs. Should I go up to a VS2 and get a smaller diamond?

My other question is how do we determine the fire type? After reading about fire. I think I prefer bold fire flashes. How do I know from a certificate that the diamond will give bold and not pin? In your opinion is Pin fire nicer than Bold?


Thankyou

You have a couple of issues here. I wish to respond to those and not to any specific diamond at which you may be looking, I will leave those recommendations for those not in the trade.

You ask about eye clean from all angles. Diamonds are properly graded from the top, and sometimes even VS1 diamonds can have inclusions that can be seen from the side. The ONLY way for you to know this FOR YOU, is to see the diamonds with YOUR eyes. Some sharp eyed youths can see things in their early twenties that will long since have vanished from their view by their mid thirties. They can also sometimes see things that others cannot, so we can not answer that question for you. It is the physics of light that make things easy to see from the side and bottom that can not be seen at all from the top. You are entitled to decide if this bothers you, but you will need to be the one who looks at each diamond, with YOUR eyes.

Why does this matter you ask, I want to see nothing from anywhere, even if I need to get a smaller diamond.

Well, it matters because you say you want to see bold flashes of white and colored light, not pinfire.

Oops. Larger flashes of bold light are a result of larger facets and larger virtual facets. Larger facets are found in larger diamonds. Larger virtual facets are found in more precisely cut diamonds. The more perfectly and precisely the diamond is cut, the better the alignment of the facets to create larger virtual facets. Larger virtual facets reflect larger rays of light, and if those rays are bent a little and clip one side or the other of the pupil of your eye those rays of light will be perceived of as colored light. (Fire.) If the precision of the cutting is poor and the virtual facets are a jumble of tiny flashes, then the result will be mostly white light, with little color since most of the rays of light will enter the pupil in their entirety, thus producing no fire.

So, if you decide that seeing an inclusion from any angle is a no go, even though you will likely never see it again once the ring is mounted, then you must go to a smaller diamond or spend a LOT of time looking at lots of diamonds until you find the one that was cut so that nothing shows from any angle. You know there are a LOT of them out there, just not which ones until you look to see for yourself, even if the vendor honestly thinks you will not see anything, since your eyes may be sharper than the vendors'.

If you get a smaller starting diamond, you will be working with smaller facets and thus smaller virtual facets and thus with smaller, less bold flashes of both white and colored light.

Oh, and the answer to your last question is, you can not know this from the report. You can get an idea from the reflector images, especially the ASET and Ideal-Scope images, but you can absolutely not tell just from the numbers on a report. You can have all the right numbers, but poor optical symmetry, meaning you will not have the bold flashes you are looking for. The bigger the starting diamond, and the better it is cut, the larger and bolder the flashes of light will be.

And to answer your last question, I personally prefer the bigger bolder flashes. I LOVE dispersion, lots and lots of dispersion and lots and lots of large flashes of white light too. Top cutting can give you both.

Just my thoughts on a Saturday afternoon.

Wink

P.S. Virtual facets are like what you see when you sit between a pair of mirrors at the barber shop. You see yourself getting smaller and smaller and smaller until the virtual mirrors that you see get to small to see with the human eye. Only in a modern round brilliant cut diamond there are 57 facets creating hundreds of virtual facets from any one angle. Peter Yantzer, recently retired Executive Director of the American Gem Society Laboratory, once told me that in a one carat diamond that is rotated over 40 degrees that there are approximately 200,000 scintillation events, most of which are far too small for the human eye to discern. He said the quality of the cutting can result in as few as five or six thousand eye visible scintillation events to as many as twelve to fourteen thousand eye visible scintillation events. "The bigger the starting virtual facets, the more eye visible scintillation events."

 

[Karl_K]

"The bigger the starting virtual facets, the more eye visible scintillation events."

To simple.
If that were always true then an oec would always have more eye visible scintillation events than a radiant or mrb and we know that it not always true.
There are some lighting conditions where it is true.