j e s r u s h . c o m

(Continued from part 1)

You need to become familar with these tools, and use them (or have your prospective jeweler use them) as much as possible. At the very least, consider only diamonds that score well on the Holloway Cut Advisor, use it to “screen” prospective stones.

• The Brillancescope for measuring light return.

• The Firescope for measuring light leakage.

• The Isee2 for measuring contrast.

• The idealscope for measuring light leakage. If you’re going to buy from a jeweler who doesn’t have a firescope or idealscope, then you’ll probably want to buy one of these suckers for yourself.

• The Holloway Cut Advisor for approximating light leakage and determining spread.

• The Atlas Cut Grade system for an overall evaluation.

• The OctoNus Diamond Calculator for 3-D modeling. Folks on the pricescope forum have this software–post a request to have someone run it on a diamond you’re considering.

• Computer Method’s Diamond Cut Study for approximating scintillation.

To shop…
After learning about these tools (and even using some of them yourself), you won’t be comfortable buying a diamond without a great deal of testing and data. You’ll obviously want crown and pavillion angles (from a lab certificate, sarin machine, or megascope machine) so you can run a Holloway Cut Analaysis, and preferably firescope, idealscope, or brillancescope data so you can get a handle on light leakage and scintillation. There are a handful of retail brick & mortar jewelers who offer some of this information. Charleston Alexander, and sometimes–Kay Jewelers–come to mind. One trick to finding retailers is to use the brillance scope website and search their retailer database. Another is to seek out stones that have AGS lab certificates which will produce crown and pavillion angles.

If you can’t find much locally, consider buying online. Buying a diamond engagment ring online has two major advantages:

• Price. Three factors make internet diamonds less expensive than their brick & mortar counterparts. Firstly, buying from an out-of-state jeweler over the Internet means you avoid paying sales tax! Consider that 5.5% sales tax on a $3000 ring is $165.
• Secondly, the internet market is much more efficient in terms of information distribution. Popular websites such as Pricescope allow you to search for stones meeting a specific criteria (i.e. .90-.99ct-G-VS2) from multiple vendors. This encourages jeweler’s to out discount each other.
• Thirdly, many Internet jewelers either operate small storefronts, or have no storefront at all. These vendors have less overhead expense than their B&M competitors who operate ritzy storefronts.

Quality. Many online diamond retailers provide crown and pavillion angle data and some of them have various scope data. Here is a brief list of some favorites:

SuperbCert
Good Old Gold
Nice Ice
Whiteflash (I have some reservations about these folks…)
Dirt Cheap Diamonds

Diamond Ideals


A few tips…

• Beware of variance, angles on a diamond are never completely constant. If a crown angle is listed at say 34.1 degrees, understand that is merely an average, in reality the crown angle varies from maybe 33.6 to 34.9 as you rotate around the diamond. Ideally, you want the range to be tight and and entirely within ideal cut limits.

• The AGS ideal cut specifications can be manipulated a little. If a stone’s pavillion angles fall just below AGS ideal range, don’t automatically dismiss it. If it’s crown angles go just above AGS ideal range they may cancel each other out–this could be a great stone.

• Laser inscription is a gimmick. You can see the inscription with a 10x loupe until the stone has been washed a few times. Thereafter the black carbon dissapears and you need a 40x microscope to see the inscription. A better security option is to have the stone gemprinted.

• Invite the experts and appraisers on the Pricescope forum to weigh in on a stone you’re considering. Post as much data as possible. They can offer insights you might be unaware of.

• When choosing the setting, don’t bother with white gold. The rhodium coating will wear off and the ring will yellow. Ignore the claims of self-proclaimed experts about special white gold alloys that stay white. Even if such alloys exist, there’s no way to find them and no way to verify that they were actually used to make your setting.

• Don’t be afraid of slightly included (SI) stones, most of them are eye clean (who cares about imperfections which you can’t see?), and they’re easy to identify (with a loupe) after repairs\cleaning at the jewelers! Interestingly, even some I1’s are eye clean!

Cleaning a Diamond (and keeping it safe)…

Diamonds are grease magnets, hand soap, makeup, cooking oils–they attract it all. They need to be cleaned almost every day. Here is a simple writeup I put together on how to clean a diamond.

The End Result…

Here is the data on the diamond which I finally choose, yours should be approximately as excellent.