Diamonds • Precious Gemstones • Jewelry • Gemology

If you don't get the sarcasm, you don't know enough about Clarity. That's one of those omnipresent 4 C's. If the LB ever made a comment like that about your woman's diamond, you are due for some serious payback.

The quick explanation is that an I 3 is the junkiest grade that quality gem labs will even call a gem. Kind of like frozen spit. Imagine what an I 5 would look like.

Now brush aside all the techno-hype you have heard and read .. even here .. and realize that clarity grading should be done by a knowledgable person, in good light, with average eyesight using a 10x color corrected triplet loupe.

Mostly, graders now use binocular microscopes and darkfield illumination. Darkfield illumination means that the diamond is held in a tweezer device mounted to the microscope so that the stone is poised above a black background and lighted from all sides. Darkfield illumination makes the inclusions, imperfections, flaws or whatever is not pure homogenous diamond easier to see.

Some graders cheat a bit by cranking the microscope up to higher power, take a look, then go back to 10X to see if the inclusion is still observable.

Inclusions come in a variety of flavors and all have jewelry-industry sweetened names

• Crystals - that somehow got mixed into the crystal growth process while the stone was forming. Some are white, some are dark. Tiny ones are called "pin points". They will appear in various sizes and clusters called clouds
• Voids - visible because the difference in the refractive index between diamond crystal and air
• Growth anomalies in the crystal that create an optical effect
• Fissures - that are not open to the surface
• Fissures - that are open to the surface

Location, location, location - A bumblebee perched on your nose gets immediate attention. And a dark crystal under the table of a diamond will draw the eye immediately.

A small white / transparent crystal under the crown will not usually be noticed except on close inspection.

Broken Promises - Yeah, pretty lame, but an engagement diamond is a promise of sorts and if it breaks because of a fissure, you're woman's heart may suffer as well. Why take the chance?

We recommend that you do 2 things

1. Set VS2 as minimum clarity for your diamond
2. Beg, borrow, buy or steal a copy of:
   
   "Photo Masters for Diamond Grading"
   by Gary A. Hoskins, GG, FGA
   Pub. Gemworld International Inc
   Northbrook, IL USA
   ISBN 0-9641733-0-1
   
   It has fantastic illustrations of all clarity grades. You can actually see what "bearding" is.

Boring details of diamond grades

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