How To

How to Tell a Diamond From Moissanite

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By eHow Contributing Writer

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(6 Ratings)

It's often said that diamonds are a girl's best friend, but now there's a solid contender on the market called moissanite. Originally a naturally occurring rare mineral, scientists recently produced a nearly perfect synthetic replica. Synthetic moissanite looks so similar to natural diamonds and shares a number of similar properties that even some jewelers can't tell them apart. Follow these steps to differentiate between the two.

Difficulty: Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

Penlight
10X jeweler's loupe

Step 1

Hold the stone up to your eye and shine a penlight through the stone. Moissanite has a double refractory, rainbow quality. A diamond exhibits a single, white refraction.
Step 2

View the stone with a 10X jeweler's loupe. Examine it through the crown, underside facets, and then look at the stone's other side. With Moissanite, the other side's back facet edges appear doubled, like two parallel lines close together. A diamond doesn't appear double faceted.
Step 3

Inspect the outer edge around the cut stone's crown, known as the girdle. Diamonds are infrequently polished. Moissanites always have polished girdles.
Step 4

Obtain a GIA or EGL certification provided by the diamond's manufacturer. Purchase your stone from a reputable dealer, who not only has a genuine diamond certification but also a certified Moissanite from the manufacturer.

Tips & Warnings

Moissanite has extremely similar qualities of brilliance, heat conduction and hardness as diamonds.
Moissanite isn't comparable to a cubic zirconia, which is a much cheaper diamond stimulant to a natural diamond.
Compared to other gemstones, Moissanite has a far superior brilliance, with close to 2 1/2 times of a diamond's fire.
Beware of vendor fraud, particularly on the Internet, as many online dealers try to pass off Moissanite as genuine diamonds.

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