How to identify stone or glass?
Moreover, to identify the main series of characteristics, available means are sufficient. If the fake is of high quality, it will require special gemological equipment and reference samples.
What stones are they trying to pass off as diamonds?
Natural gems, extracted from the depths of the earth, have the greatest value. Artificial diamonds do not differ in chemical composition and properties from their natural “brothers”, however, their price will be approximately 20% lower. Only a gemologist in the laboratory can identify a synthetic stone.
An artificial “analogue” of a diamond is cubic zirconia, which is used in mass-produced jewelry to reduce their cost. A cheap material for simulating diamonds is cut glass. Most often these are high-quality rhinestones.
Natural analogues are rock crystal, colorless topaz, moissanite, white, without impurities, leucosapphire.
Ways to check
- Household spectrometer for gemstone identification.
- Immersion test in a glass of water. When illuminated, the edges will be noticeable, and moissanite or cubic zirconia will give colored highlights.
- It is impossible to read text or see anything through a diamond due to its refractive power.
- Place the crystals in a transparent container like a Petri dish, pour in water and direct a beam of light through the stones from above, after placing a white sheet of paper underneath. The reflection of diamonds will be “petals” – like the flame of a gas stove, and moissanites will produce long colored rays.
- When you breathe on the diamond, condensation does not appear.
- Adamant will stick to the fatty surface.
- Jeweler’s or “Binocular loupe”. Using 10x magnification, you can examine the stone down to the smallest detail.
Fianit
The crystal’s impeccable, unnatural purity indicates a laboratory past. Cubic zirconia in the light is cloudy, less “airy”, its play of light and the sparkle of its edges are weaker. If you breathe on cubic zirconia, it – unlike a diamond – will fog up.
Moissanite
Natural moissanite is almost as expensive as diamonds. Synthesized moissanite is popular as a complement to corundums. Natural moissanites with a diameter of more than 2 mm are not found, and jewelry with them is quite rare. And the synthetic analogue will give itself away as condensation if you breathe on the crystal.
Rhinestone
A rock crystal crystal does not have the refractive power of a diamond, so text or an image can easily be seen through it. Large stones are used for jewelry inserts. Transparent rock crystal is rare. A “haze” is always noticeable inside such a crystal. A cloudy girdle will also give off rock crystal in the decoration, along with an abundance of inclusions.
Glass
For inexpensive imitations, limestone-alkaline, bottle, window or aventutine glass can be used. It is currently not profitable to purposefully use glass as a replacement for diamond. The advent of synthetic stones makes this method too time-consuming and resource-consuming. Even everyday methods of testing – a drop of water, vegetable oil, reading a text through a stone, examining it under a magnifying glass – will immediately reveal an imitation. Although, when they learned to make rhinestones in the 19th century, they have long been a popular way to counterfeit jewelry stones due to their brilliance, play of light and greater durability.
Most rubies, sapphires, emeralds and other inserts in jewelry today are synthetic. This is not mentioned in the advertisement, but just look at the product tag to be convinced that in 90% of cases there will be “synthet” next to the name of the stone. or another indication of the artificial origin of the insert, for example, “g/t emerald”. This is where the huge difference in price comes from, for example, for a ring with a ruby, in different stores. Is it so scary, and what kind of synthetic stones can be used in jewelry?
Synthesized gemstone as an analogue
Natural synthetic stones are sometimes called artificially grown rubies, sapphires, and diamonds. Their composition is identical to their natural counterparts, but, unlike them, they grew in laboratories – not over millions of years of the planet’s life, but in a matter of minutes, weeks, months.
Let us note that, according to Russian legislation (Article 2 of Federal Law 41 of March 26.03.98, XNUMX), the category of precious stones includes stones of exclusively natural origin, incl. diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires, alexandrites, pearls, unique samples of amber. So the expression “synthetic gemstones” is illegal from a legal point of view.
Advantages and disadvantages of synthetic gemstones
Synthetic analogues of precious stones have a number of advantages:
- are cheap;
- due to their artificial origin, they have no cracks, they are easier to cut – any type of cut can be used;
- you can grow a sapphire or ruby in a form suitable for the chosen cut;
- synthetics do not require additional processing (refinement).
It would seem that there are continuous advantages. And yet natural stones cost tens, hundreds and thousands of times more than artificial ones. Why are they so valuable? For some people, awareness of authenticity is important. For others, buying natural gemstones is a kind of investment. Still others believe in the magic of stones. From this point of view, only a mineral of natural origin has the power of a talisman or amulet.
Stones as imitation
Imitation is not fake. We do not consider cases where one stone is passed off as another (for example, garnet or tourmaline for a ruby) or is completely replaced with glass or plastic. We are not talking about the substitution of concepts, when the seller confuses the buyer by using the name of a precious stone to profitably sell a less valuable one, for example, as in the case of the “Yakut emerald” – chrome diopside. We are talking only about artificially synthesized stones, which are legally used in jewelry as an inexpensive replacement for precious stones, differing from them in composition, but resembling them in appearance.
Fianit
Cubic zirconia is an artificial analogue of a diamond. It differs in composition (it is zirconium dioxide), but is similar to diamond in such characteristics as refractive index and has a diamond luster. The hardness of cubic zirconia on the Mohs scale is lower in comparison with diamond, 8 versus 10. It would seem not much, only 2 points, but in reality this means that cubic zirconia is about 180 times softer than diamond, and is also brittle. That’s why you shouldn’t choose it for engagement or wedding rings – it won’t stand up to daily wear. In the color version, cubic zirconia replaces emerald, ruby, and sapphire.
Cubic zirconia was invented in the USSR in 1968. Now this is the most popular imitation diamond – it costs a penny and looks impressive. But in the first years of production, it was exported at the same price as diamonds.
There is a legend that in the USSR they did not advertise the invention of cubic zirconia for several years and managed to sell large quantities of artificial stones under the guise of first-class diamonds. Since 1972, cubic zirconia in the USSR replaced diamonds in mass-produced jewelry.
Moissanite
Moissanite in its composition is silicon carbide. Today, this stone is actively advertised as a wonderful replacement for diamonds – not just equivalent, but even superior in quality. The following advantages are indicated:
- a higher refractive index of light than a diamond (an unnatural shine for a diamond is one of the signs by which experts identify moissanite);
- a higher dispersion rate, that is, a better “play” of the stone (however, in most cases, in order for the stone to “play”, a cut other than a classic diamond is needed);
- hardness exceeding that of precious corundums – sapphires and rubies (9,25 versus 9).
Natural moissanites are found less frequently than diamonds, and are not valued at all – they are small, ugly, dirty-brown crystals, unsuitable for use in jewelry. Even artificially synthesized stones always have a yellowish-green tint.
“Real” moissanites
Until 2016, the patent for the production of synthesized moissanites belonged to an American company. Now its effect has expired, and the main producer of raw materials is China. Hence the division into “real” moissanites (made in the USA) and “fake” Chinese ones. In both cases, it is a synthetic artificial stone, which is not classified as precious.
Scientists from China have developed a technology for coating moissanite with a diamond film, which made it possible to remove the unsightly tint. The presence of this film confuses even diamond testers: they can confuse moissanite with a diamond. The cost of American moissanite is higher than Chinese: a large stone costs the same as a small diamond.
Rhinestones
Rhinestones, that is, cut pieces of glass, were the first crystals to replace precious stones in jewelry – examples of their use have been known since the Middle Ages. To imitate colored crystals, rubies, sapphires and emeralds, colored foil was placed under the rhinestones. The name comes from the name of Georg (Joseph) Strass. This jeweler invented lead crystal in the 18th century, a toxic material with excellent performance and brilliance.
Today, the most famous rhinestones are, of course, Austrian Swarovski. The composition is classified, but it definitely does not contain harmful lead (in crystals produced after 2011). They say that the actively advertised diamondite is also cut glass, but there is no exact data about this type of insert.
The history of the appearance of synthesized stones
Attempts to synthesize gemstones have been made for centuries, but Auguste Verneuil was the first to obtain large enough samples. The first synthetic stone was ruby. Already at the beginning of the 20th century, red corundum began to be synthesized on an industrial scale – like many stones, rubies are used not only in jewelry, but also in industry.
Various methods are used to grow the mineral, but they still have a common principle: low-quality raw materials are crushed, and on its basis the stone is grown under artificial conditions. Most often used:
- Verneuil method – for sapphire, ruby, spinel, rutile and fabulite. Based on the use of natural low-grade raw materials, crushed into powder (charge) and seed.
- The Czochralski method is for growing alexandrite, sapphire, garnet, spinel, tanzanion. Used since the 1950s, it makes it possible to grow large crystals by controlling their growth. In English, such stones are called pulled, which means “stretched”. The mineral is literally pulled out of the melt of the raw material.
- Hydrothermal (h/t) method – for emerald, aquamarine, morganite, sapphire, ruby, beryl. The crushed natural stone is transferred into an aqueous solution, and a crystal with a reconstructed structure is recreated in autoclaves.
Synthetic stones in Russia
The older generation likes to repeat: “Now you only have synthetics, but before…”. What came before? Earrings, rings and pendants that we inherited from our mothers and grandmothers are almost always inlaid with synthetic stones. Natural resources were either sent abroad, used for the needs of industry and the military-industrial complex, or were not mined at all.
1966 is recognized as the year of the beginning of mass production of jewelry in the USSR. The inserts in them were synthetic rubies, sapphires, and alexandrites grown using the Czochralski method. The USSR did not produce synthetic emeralds, so there is a chance that the green insert of my mother’s ring is a natural emerald or at least natural beryl.
Fashionable synthetics
It must be said that imitation is fashionable. Now many are delighted with moissanite, previously cubic zirconia was popular, and even earlier, shortly after World War II, synthetic rutile, which was also called titanium, diamond, daimotist, rainbow diamond, was a bestseller.
Rutile has a higher refractive index than diamond, and you can see a rainbow glow in it, which caused the delight of the public. True, interest in rutile quickly subsided. There is a birefringence effect in the stone, which clouds its back edges. So synthetics can be fashionable, but diamonds. Diamonds are forever!
What are the main differences between synthesized and natural stones?
It is extremely difficult to distinguish between a synthetic and natural sapphire or ruby “at home,” so the best way not to make a mistake when purchasing is to make it in trusted places and carefully study the product tag, without hesitating to ask the seller questions. Even for experts, it is not always easy to determine the origin of a stone. “Synthetics” can be indicated by rounded air bubbles, the presence of dust-like inclusions, and curved lines of mineral growth.
Synthetic sapphire: difference from natural
Synthetic sapphire is a stone that has the same composition as natural one. If you see a gold ring with a large sapphire that costs 8000 rubles, you can rest assured that this is a synthetic sapphire. Despite seasonal sales, promotions, and store closures, natural stone is more expensive.
Synthetic sapphire is flawless and crystal clear, its color is even, which is rare for natural corundum. Examination under a microscope will reveal a growth pattern uncharacteristic of a natural formation. The price of high-quality synthetic sapphire is much higher than the cost of imitations, for example, sapphire-colored cubic zirconia.
Synthetic ruby: difference from natural one
Low price, unnatural purity and uniformity of color are the first things that should make you think about the artificial origin of ruby. Large red corundums are rarely found in nature, and therefore sizes larger than 1 carat should be alarming. In addition, synthetic ruby will change color under ultraviolet light. Under a magnifying glass you can see inclusions-bubbles (in natural – needles).
What to buy, natural gems, their synthesized analogue or imitation – it’s up to you to decide. The situation with stones is similar to the situation with works of art. You can buy an original Monet (natural diamond), a painted copy (artificially synthesized stone) or a poster (cubic zirconia, moissanite, rhinestones). In all three cases, no one will accuse you of lack of taste. However, you are unlikely to be proud to show the poster to guests.
The Wedding Ring Palace offers jewelry that is worthy of becoming heirlooms. Our jewelry is made with natural precious stones.
