Is red better than green in ASET- is leakage bad?

[Rockdiamond]

HI PS friends!

There was a recent discussion where a PS regular mentioned they thought "crushed ice" asets are "ugly"
I have been raising a few important aspects of aset interpretation fore a long time- and thankfully a few regular contributors are picking up on this. Let's take these two commonly held beliefs here.

Red is better than green
Leakage is bad.

If a new reader comes to PS, that is what they're going to learn.
And it's extremely misleading misinformation if we're speaking of Fancy Shaped diamonds.
Round diamonds are a totally different ballgame- yet this crucial fact never seems to come up.
Not to place blame on anyone here- current AGSL literature itself is biased in this manner.
We have the charts showing this biased view. It's quite easy to drink that kool aid if a consumer spends a lot of time here.

This can lead to cutters cutting diamonds to produce more red in ASET.
In many cases this produces a stone with dark center, and noticeably smaller spread. In some cases this provides an Increased yield, and premium price- cutters love that.
Yet the claim is often made that stones with dispersed green and white favor the cutter's profit.
This is not because I love crushed ice- or that's all we sell.
My motiviation is true consumer education, as opposed to baised opinions being passed off as facts of diamond cutting.

The very good news is that AGSL has taken note of this- and in time we may get a more rounded manner of ASET interpretation.

 

[MrsJolie]

Thanks for starting this new thread. Reading the comments on the other one was informative. I have a crushed ice flavored cushion on hold that I almost let go because I thought its crushed ice appearance meant it wasn't well cut and undesirable. Your comments helped me decide to keep it after all. Thank you!

I do not have an ASET of it, but now I'm kind of curious. How would I go about getting one for it? Is it expensive?

 

[chrono]

http://ideal-scope.com/shop/?product_order=date&product_sort=asc
http://www.americangemsociety.org/uploads/10001368819598.pdf

 

[Rockdiamond]

You're welcome MrsJolie!!
If you get the hand held aset it can help you to "reverse engineer" your stone- that is to say, once you ,now what the aset of a stone you love looks like you can use it to find another.
Having said that- another issue is ASET photography- so what you see with the hand held version may not look a lot like the aset images you see published.
We recently got a new presentation aset from AGSL that is far better than the hand held unit for either photography, or just looking. But it's expensive and I don't know that it's available to consumers.
Here's an aset image taken with the hand held and a light


Here's one for the presentation unit- I consider it a HUGE improvement



Here's an issue with photography- the holder for the diamond inside the aset is round- and of course cushions and radiant cuts are not round.
The result is that the girdle of non round stones sits a bit higher than a round diamond will- which also effect the outcome.

Chrono- I also wanted to thank you- because it's obvious you've got an inquisitive and open mind, and you've really picked up on the crux of this issue.

 

[MrsJolie]

So...is that ASET image on the first stone a good one? Because I think that diamond is gorgeous

 

[Rockdiamond]

So...is that ASET image on the first stone a good one? Because I think that diamond is gorgeous

This is a great example of a SPECTACULAR diamond with an aset that would get knocked based on the "standard" interpretation.
But part of that has to do with the difficulties taking an accurate ASET image - the stone in the photo was also quite large ( about 5cts) which also makes it more difficult to capture