5 Homemade Tests for Diamonds

Terrified That Your Diamond’s a Fake? 5 Homemade Tests to Set Your Mind at Ease

Congratulations! You’re now the proud owner of a brilliant, shinning diamond. You’ve saved up for a while, and bought the precious stone for a loved one, or to celebrate a special occasion. Unfortunately, there have been occurrences, especially in the last year, of customers buying diamond jewelry from reputable vendors only to find that the stones they’ve bought are fakes. According to a piece dedicated to the subject in Huffington Post, there are 5 relatively simple ways to check for a diamond’s veracity at home - without engaging the services of a paida gemologist.

Observe the diamond through a loupe: acquire a loupe (which is simply a magnifying glass) in any jewelry store, and look for imperfections. Most diamonds have them, while fakes look perfect. You can also look of the edges of the diamond to look for sharp edges, since the counterfeit one will have somewhat rounded edges.

Use a sandpaper against the ‘gem’: Diamonds, the world’s hardest stones, cannot be scratched by the rough surface of the sandpaper. The most common “fake” diamond is cubic zirconia and if you scratched it with sandpaper, it would scratch up just like any other material that is not a diamond.

The fog test: since diamonds are good conductors of heat, breathe on the surface of the stone. Any stone that isn’t a diamond, including cubic zirconia, will be hazy for a moment. This is because they do not conduct heat and therefore, the warm breath condenses on the surface before it dissipates. In a real diamond, the fog dissipates immediately. However, moissanite passes this test and you should be careful to do other tests.

Sparkle Test and refraction: hold the gem in light and observe how it sparkles. Diamonds have high refractive index and therefore, they sparkle more than other materials. When a real diamond is observed outside it reflects rainbow colors on its surfaces. Fake diamonds have rainbow colors inside and this is the delusion that most people have about diamonds.

Read-through Test: if the diamond is unmounted, you can place it on a piece of paper with some writings. If the diamond is real, you wouldn’t be able to read the writings because all the light will be scattered. For the fake diamonds the writings might be magnified and visible enough to be read.