Identification of moissanite

It is my understanding that the easiest way to identify a moissanite
stone is by its double refraction. Place the stone on a ruled ink
line on paper and look for the double image. Is this correct? (along
with other characteristics of course).

George Hamilton
www.explorationgeologist.com

Well, that would work if you had a slab of the stuff, but its not too easy
for a mounted stone.
Use a 10x loupe and examine the edges of the back facets through the table.
The effect is not very pronounced, but is more obvious with big stones. The
best way is to compare a moissanite with a similar sized diamond. For the
diamond, the edges will look sharp and clear, but for the moissanite they
will appear slightly blurred. When you get the hang of it you will see that
the fuzziness is really double lines very close together.
An electronic tester will give a more authoritive identification.

--

Regards, Gary Wooding
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"George Hamilton" wrote in message
...
It is my understanding that the easiest way to identify a moissanite
stone is by its double refraction. Place the stone on a ruled ink
line on paper and look for the double image. Is this correct? (along
with other characteristics of course).

George Hamilton
www.explorationgeologist.com

Or, examine pavilion facets with a loupe loking through the stone.
Similar to zircon, you'll likely see doubled facet edge lines. Or the
Hogkinson (sp?) gem optics technique is to hild the gem as closely as
possible to the eye and look for doubled spectra. Also, while close,
moisanite;s SG is different enough that an accurate measurent should
seperate it from diamond.

check www.gemsociety.org and www.yourgemologist.com for tables of
diamond simulants and their charcteristics.

Carl
1 Lucky Texan


George Hamilton wrote:
It is my understanding that the easiest way to identify a moissanite
stone is by its double refraction. Place the stone on a ruled ink
line on paper and look for the double image. Is this correct? (along
with other characteristics of course).

George Hamilton
www.explorationgeologist.com


--
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You should also visit

http://www.scotgem.demon.co.uk/

and look for the article Moissanite by Alan Hodgkinson

This seems to cover pretty much all of the ways to test,
some of which are quite simple.

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Reading all this info on moissanite leaves me drooling for a piece of
rough to cut. 15 minutes of googling leads me to believe that it is
not available in uncut rough. Is this true?

js

On Wed, 20 Oct 2004 21:49:15 -0700, in ôõ (Jack Schmidling) wrote:

Reading all this info on moissanite leaves me drooling for a piece of
rough to cut. 15 minutes of googling leads me to believe that it is
not available in uncut rough. Is this true?


so far as I know, yes. It's a product of only one company, which jealously guards
it's production secrets, and sells only cut stones. However, perhaps some
solicitation of various jewelers might net you a chipped stone you could buy cheaply
enough, which you could then recut. Be aware that the stuff is not cheap, though, so
it likely will still be rather costly rough, and likely, somewhat smaller than you've
been enjoying wth C.Z. and marbles and the like...