
The Faking and Making of Precious Stones - benbreen
http://recipes.hypotheses.org/4659
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femto
It's a diamond if it's carbon atoms in a tetrahedral arrangement, no matter
whether it came from a hole in the ground or a factory. Fair enough to call a
mix of linseed oil and pigment a fake, but the opening paragraph of the
article tries to call the real thing, out of a factory, a fake.

The only real distinction between a factory-made and a mined diamond is that
the factory-made diamond has a lower cost to the environment and is less
likely to be associated with human suffering.

Edit: add reference:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_diamond](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_diamond)

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imaginenore
> _The only real distinction between a factory-made and a mined diamond is
> that the factory-made diamond has a lower cost to the environment and is
> less likely to be associated with human suffering._

That's not true. There are other differences, including impurities, amounts of
isotopes, optical properties (due to the impurities).

You're right about the human suffering part.

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bluedevil2k
He's wrong about the human suffering part - diamonds come from every
continent, not just Africa. The mines in Canada and Australia aren't
experiencing any human rights violations. Even the African mines are largely
controlled by the major miners in the industry. The diamond industry has
changed a lot in the past 10-15 years. Blood diamonds is an old and outdated
stereotype.

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Animats
Most precious stones can be made synthetically. For sapphire and ruby you can
buy bar stock and sheets. Most diamond powder is synthetic, and cheap enough
that it's on saws for concrete. Apple, of course, was planning to put sapphire
coatings on their phones. Many checkout scanners already have sapphire window
coatings. Home Depot, where people drag metal tools across scanners for all
day, uses them.

The diamond industry, through its promotional efforts, backed itself into a
corner. The goal was "flawless" diamonds, that is, perfect crystals. This put
them into competition with the semiconductor materials industry, which makes
perfect crystals. There are now 140mm diamond wafers. A TV expose:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhnvZDLizlg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhnvZDLizlg)

Then there's the Cubic Zirconia Channel on daytime TV.

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Brakenshire
Surprised they say that synthetic diamonds are only 30-40% cheaper than
natural diamonds. I was looking forward to being able to buy a diamond the
size of my fist for £100. Wonder whether the lack of movement on cost is just
the early players producing low supply and matching the existing natural
diamond market, or whether that is a serious cost-based price.

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bluedevil2k
It's not cheap (cheap meaning $100 for a fist sized rock) to make a synthetic
diamond. Factor in the lack of demand for large fake diamonds as well. Almost
all fake diamonds are used in manufacturing - drills, saws, etc.

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jacquesm
Synthetic != fake. They're just as real as any other diamond. Fake diamonds
are definitely not used in saws & drills, but synthetic ones are.

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ChuckMcM
I think this story buries the lede. Which is that the author made a 'fake'
emerald with things found around the 'house.' As opposed to the modern
manufacture of crystals that are chemically identical to gemstones, varying
usually only in their improbable purity. There is at least a modest wage in
making 'fake' emeralds and rubies at that Renaissance Faire :-)

