Diamondsafe.com Introduction

Welcome to DiamondSafe.com, where you can find quality certified diamonds for less. We are part of a leading diamond and jewelry design and manufacturing group with over 30 years of experience in the diamond jewelry manufacturing industry. Of paramount importance to DiamondSafe.com, our cutters use the latest techniques to create the most brilliant diamonds and our master jewelers to create magnificent rings, pendants, wedding bands, earrings etc., to set these diamonds for our clients. At DiamondSafe.com., we purchase diamonds only from legitimate sources (no conflict diamonds).

Diamond Rings
Diamond Rings serve an even greater purpose than as symbols of beauty. Diamond rings have been cherished as love tokens since the earliest of times. Mary of Burgundy was the first woman in recorded history to receive a diamond engagement ring for her wedding in ancient India. The traditional gift of diamond rings has existed for centuries and will continue to grow with each new couple's love.
Diamonds

Diamond Earrings
Why not surprise her with the unexpected? A stunning gift of diamond studs to accompany her to all those special occasions and memorable events you two will share. DiamondSafe.com's exceptional diamond earrings incorporate incomparable beauty with an unbelievable price.

History of Diamond engagement rings

Have you ever wondered why the diamond is the engagement ring of choice? Where did the idea originate from? Why is the diamond considered the ultimate symbol of love and adoration?For centuries, diamonds have been widely known as the universal symbol of eternal love and commitment. This is mainly due to the fact that diamonds are beautiful, strong, and durable, much like the tradition of a lasting marriage.
It is believed that the tradition of gifting an engagement ring featuring a diamond stone or centerpiece originated in 1477. This is the year in which Archduke Maximillian of Austria gave a diamond ring to Mary of Burgundy.

After this proposal, giving a diamond engagement ring became a widespread trend among the wealthy and famous. Around the globe, the upper classes began to follow suit and give the sparkly gems to their beloved and betrothed.

Over the next few centuries, giving diamond engagement rings was relatively limited to only the richest and noblest families. However, in 1870 several diamond mines were discovered in South Africa. This greatly increased the availability and affordability of diamonds to the general public.
As supply increased, declining costs allowed even those who did not don a crown to invest in diamonds. The market was flooded with a newfound diamond supply, and sales flourished in Europe and the United States.

In the late 1930s, the United States became the premium marketplace for high-quality diamonds, effectively making diamond engagement rings a common choice in America. Focus on marketing the diamonds was transferred to the U.S. as sales in Europe reached an all-time low just before World War II.
Though both continents were still experiencing the effects of the Great Depression, Americans clung to the idea that diamonds would last forever and be able to be passed down for generations to come. Since then, Americans have consistently purchased diamonds for engagement rings and other commemorative jewelry.
When an engagement ring is given, it is customary to wear both it and the wedding band on the left ring finger. This ancient tradition originated from Greece, whose citizens believe that the vena amoris, a vein located in that finger, is a direct line to the heart.

Prior to the tradition of choosing a mate before purchasing a ring, many men in the Middle Ages would do just the opposite. They typically kept a ring tied to their hats, and would give it to their chosen wife-to-be once she was found.

These betrothal rings in the Middle Ages were frequently inscribed with love poems and other messages. Also called “posy” rings, they remained popular until the Victorian Era.
Also popular prior to diamond engagement rings were “gimmel”, or twin rings. During the Renaissance period, parts of this ring were worn by both the bride-to-be and groom-to-be, and sometimes by a third party. The three parts were united on the wedding day to become the wedding ring. In 1525, Catherine Bora wed Martin Luther with an inscribed gimmel ring


Customary in earlier ages, many mates were chosen and agreed upon by the families of the bride and groom. Princess Mary, daughter of Henry VIII, was betrothed to the infant Dauphin of France, heir to the throne of France, when she was only two years old. The engagement, which took place in 1518, resulted in a gift of a diamond set in a tiny gold ring. This was the smallest engagement ring ever recorded.

During the rule of Louis XVI, from 1754 to 1793, the popular engagement ring style included a diamond cluster shaped like a long, pointed oval. These remained quite popular for the next 150 years.
Diamonds and rubies, signifying eternity and love, were commonly combined in rings used in the 17th and 18th centuries. Styles also featured many heart patterns, a popular symbol during that time.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, colored stones still remained quite popular in engagement jewelry. Themes used in many rings would include several stones which spelled out a word or name with the first letter of each stone. For example, “dearest” would be represented in a ring containing a diamond, emerald, amethyst, ruby, epidote, sapphire and turquoise.

Serpents were considered a symbol of good luck, and used in many engagement rings in the same time period. Queen Victoria was given a ring using this motif.

Solitaire settings, as one of the most popular styles of engagement rings were not introduced until the late 19th century. In the early 20th century, the “princess ring”, which features multiple diamonds, became popular in the U.S. This served as the original influence for the currently-popular three-stone style.
Platinum became the metal of choice in the early 20th century for engagement rings due to strength and durability. Later, during World War II, white and yellow gold was used for bridal jewelry because platinum was restricted to military use only.

Other Large and Famous Diamonds

The Braganza from a Brazilian mine is reported to be the largest diamond ever found and weighs 1680 carats. It is part of the Portuguese crown jewels, but is not available for testing. Some sau it is not a diamond, but a colourless topaz.
The Presidente Vargas of 726.6 carat is the largest Brazilian diamond ever found in that country.
The Jonker diamond was discovered in 1934. The 726-carat stone, said to be flawless purity, was cut into twelve smaller stones.
The Star of Africa, is the largest polished diamond in the world. It weighs 530.2 carats and has been cut with 74 facets.
The Victoria, Imperial, or Great White weighing 457.5 carats came from a South African mine and reached Europe in 1884. It was cut to a beautiful 180 carats and valued in 1900 at 6,200,000.
The Pitt, supposedly the most perfect and beautiful diamond ever known, was found in Patiala in the Punjab in 1701. William Pitt, then Governor of Madras, had the rough stone of 410 carats cut to a perfect brilliant of 163.9 carats. Duc d'Orleans, Regent of France, bought it and Napolean Bonaparte wore it on the pommel of his sword. The gem was said to be the key to his success.
The danau Rajah, a stone from Borneo found in 1787 and now in the treasury of the Rajah of Mattan in Borneo, is reported to weigh 367 carats. In 1868 gem experts found it to be only a rock crystal, but the story was spread that an imitation was submitted for the examination.

The Nizam, a diamond of 440 carats, was said to have been picked up in Golconda by a child in 1835. Cut to 227 carats from the rough, it is part of the Nizam's collection, now with the Government of India.It was brocken up during the Indian Mutiny of 1857. It may soon be exhibited in the museum at Hyderabad.

The Star of the South, found in 1853, is the largest rough diamond from Brazil. Weighing 254.5 carats, it was part of a cluster of crystals. The Gaekwad of Baroda bought it after it was cut to a pure brilliant of 125 carats.

The Great Table of Tavernier weighed 242.2 carats and was found in 1642 near Golconda.

The Darya-i-noor or Sea of Light of 186 carats and the Taj-e-mah or Crown of the Moon, weighing 146 carats, were both cut as rosettes and were part of the collection of the Shah Pahlevi of Iran.

The Florentine of 137 carats, yellow but clear and lustrous, also known as The Great of Tuscany or the Austrian, is in the Imperial Palace treasury at Vienna. Charles the Bold lost it on the battlefield of Granson, where a Swiss soldier found it. Ultimately the Grand Duke Francis Stephen of Tuscany took it to Vienna.

The Stewart, a large diamond of 288.4 carats was found in 1872 in the river diggings on the Vaal. It was later cut to a slightly yellowish brilliant of 120 carats.

The DeBeers diamond of 228.5 carat was cut from a rough of 428.5 carats soon after the company was formed. Itw as first shown at the Paris Exhibition of 1889 and is recognised as the fourth largest cut diamond in the world.

The Millennium Star was discovered in the Congo in the early 1990s by De Beers. It took three years to cut the stone with lasers, but it is the only completely flawless, 203-carat, pear-shaped diamond known.

The Porter Rhodes, a perfectly colourless blue-white stone, was found at Kimberely on February 12, 1880. It weighed around 150 to 160 carats.

The Tiffany Brilliant, is also from South Africa. Flawless and with a beautiful orange-yellow colour, it weighs 125.5 carats.
The Nasik diamond is a triangular brilliant of 89.5 carats. The last Prince of Peshawar took it from the Shiva temple at Nasik and finally sold it to the East India Company. It is said to be in the possession of the Duke of Westminster.

The Shah of weight 88 carats, was in the collection of the Shah of Iran. It has a peculiar shape and the names of tree Persian kings are engraved on it. The Persian prince, Chosroes, the younger son of Abbas Mirza, presented it to the Tsar Nicolas in 1829.

The Idol's Eye diamond is pear-shaped and weighs 70 carats. It is said that it was used to pay ransom to the Sultan of Turkey for a princess he abducted.
The Empress Eugenic diamond of 51 carats is a beautiful brilliant that Catharine 2 of Russia gave her favourite, Potemkin. Napoleon bought it as a wedding-gift to his bride, Eugenie but it was later sold to the Gaekwad of Baroda.

The Piggott is a brilliant cut diamond of 49 carats brought by Lord Piggott to England around 1775 from India. It was later given to A1 Pasha, the Viceroy of Egypt. This stone has since been lost, and, according to rumour, has been destroyed.

The white Saxon is a beautiful square diamond, and weighs 48.75 carats. August the Strong, Duke of Saxony is said to have paid 1,000,000 thalers for it in 1707 and kept it in the Zwinger Castle in Dresden.

The Pasha of Egypt is a fine eight-sided brilliant of 40 carats, purchased by the Viceroy Ibrahim of Egypt for 28,000.

The Dresden Green, an almond-shaped diamond owned by the Saxon crown since 1743 weighs 40 carats. It is a very clear green, perfectly transparent and flawless.

The Polar Star is a beautiful brilliant cut diamond of 40 carats set in the Russian crown.

The Star of Este of 25.4 carats is absolutely flawless. The cut as a brilliant is so perfect that it appear bigger than the Empress Eugenie ot the Sancy diamond. The Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austrian-Este, eldest son of the Archduke Karl Ludwig bought it for 64,000 Austrian florins in 1876.

The Hortensia diamond of 20 carats has a peach colour. Named after the Queen of Holland, Napoleon Bonaparte's stepdaughter, it is set in one of the French crown jewels.

The Burton Taylor diamond weighed 244 carats when unearthed from the Premier mine of South Africa in 1966. Harry Winston cut it to a pear shaped beauty of weight 69 carats. The jeweller Cartier bought it in an auction in 1969 and sold it to Richard Burton, the actor. It was sold for around $ 3,000,000 recently to fund a hospital in Botswana.

Famous Diamonds of the World

The cullinan diamond was dug out from the ground by a native miner in South Africa's Transvaal Premier Mine in 1905. Weighing 3,106 carats in the rough, this colourless stone is regarded today as one of the greatest diamond discoveries of all time. The Transvall government purchased it and named it after Sir Thomas Cullinan, who had discovered the mine three years earlier. They presented the stone to King Edward 5 in 1907, after which it was brocken up into nine large stones and a hundred smaller ones. The pear-shaped Cullinan-1 piece of 530.2 carats is the largest cut diamond in the world and is presently set into the head of the English sceptre. The Cullinan 2, often referred to as the Star of Africa weighs 317 -carats and is in the Imperial State Crown.

The Centenary diamond weighed 599 carats in the rough and was found in 1988. Under instructions from the De Beers Company, one of the world's most renowned stone cutters, Tolkowsky cut it in the then new brilliant style to a perfectly coloured gem of 273 carats. This largest diamond in the world was presented to Queen Elizabeth 2 to become part of the British Crown Jewels.

The Regent Diamond was found in 1699 in one of the mines on the Krishna River in southern India. William Pitt, Governor of Madras at Fort St.George in Madras, bought the 410-carat stone for 20,400 and brought it to England in 1701. It was then cut and sold to the Duke of Orleans, then Regent of France. Marie Antoinette was seen wearing it, but during the France Revolution it disappeared; later it was located later in a hole in a Paris loft. The French government pawned it once to raise money from a German banker and again to guarantee a loan from Dutch bankers. Napoleon Bonaparte had it set in the hilt of the sword he carried when he was proclaimed Emperor of France, It is now in the Louvre museum in Paris.

The Darya-i-Nur is a flawless, transparent pink stone, of weight between 175 and 195 carats. Nadir Shah captured it along with the Kohinoor when the attacked Delhi in 1739 and was last seen when the Shah Pahlevi of Iran wore it for his coronation in 1967. It is the largest and most remarkable gem in the State Jewels of Iran. Set in a gold frame with other diamonds, it is topped by a crown bearing lions with ruby eyes, holding scimitars.

The Orloff is the largest diamond of the Russian collection. This stone of 195 carats weight is of an almost hemipherical rosette shape and is said to have been stolen from the Srirangam temple near Tiruchirapalli, India. It finally arrived in Amesterdam where the Prince Orloffbought it to give the Empress Catherine 2 of Russia.

The Moon of the Mountains, a diamond of 120 carats, once adorned the throne of Nadir Shah. After his assassination, it was stolen by an Afghan soldier. It finally ended up in the collection of the Russian government.

The hope diamond was also found in the Kollur mines. In 1642, Tavernier seems to have bought it before selling it to Louis 14 in 1668. It is possible that originally it was a beautiful violet blue diamond called the Tavernier, of a mass of 112.2 carats. In 1673, Sieur Pitau, the court jeweler, cut it to a stone of 67.13 carats. Louis 15, in 1749 then had it cut to an oval pice of 45.22 carats. It disappeared for several years after the French Revolution, but reappeared in America when it was bought by Henry Philip Hope, after whom it is named. After Henry Hope died, the diamond passed throught several owners till Evelyn Walsh McLean bought the diamond in 1911. On her death in 1947, Harry Winston, the jeweller bought it and presented it to the Smithsonian Institution where it can be seen today. The Hope diamond known as the most valuable stone in the world.

Famous Diamonds

The price per gram of diamond increases with its weight but stones beyond a certain size are so rare that they cannot be valued on this scale. The few very large and spectacular diamonds are priceless and can trace their complex and controversial history through tales of war. intrigue and love. It is, in fact, the story of their passage through the lives of several owners and not their size, lustre or other properties that determines the price that they command.

The kohinoor or the 'Mountain of Light' diamond was found two thousand five hundred years ago by a villager of Matanga in Kollur in Andhra Pradesh. Old palm leaf manuscripts record the weight of the rough stone as 1986 carats. Sanskirt legends report that Karna, the King of Anga, wore this diamond in his crown to give him invincibility during the great Mahabharata war. The stone later came into the possession of Emperor Vikramaditya of Ujjain (60 BC). During the early Persian invasion of India, the diamond was apparently taken to the court of Darius the Great but after the break-up of the Persian Empire, the gem found its way back to India. There is recorded evidence that the Kohinoor was with the family of the Rajah of Malwa in India, for several centuries, having been passed down from generation to generation. When the Moghuls invaded India, Sultan Babar, the first of the Moghuls emperors, acquired the diamond in 1340 AD. It was hidden in the Moghul treasury for about two centuries and in 1526 the diamond was set as one of the peacock's eyes in the famous Peacock Throne of Shah Jahan. In 1739, Nadir Shah of Persia, invaded India and captured Delhi and seized the Peacock Throne but could not find the Kohinoor diamond about which he had heard to much. Nadir Shah later learned from informants that the Moghul emperor had hidden the stone is his turban. During a dinner party Nadir Shah suggested an exchange of turbans, a custom prevalent at the time. The Emperor could not refuse this request and reluctantly undid his silk turban, revealing the gem. Nadir Shah then named it the 'Mountain of Light'. Historians disagree about the source of the name of the stone and insist that the name was a variant on Kollur, where it was found.

When Nadir Shah was murdered, one of his bodyguards took the Kohinoor to Afghanistan. Years later, Maharaja Ranjit Singh of the Punjab acquired it in exchange for military help to Ahmed Shah, the Moghul king. After the British won the war against the Sikhs, they annexed the Punjab and the East India Company claimed the diamond as partial idemnity. To mark the two-hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Company in 1850, the directors presented the diamond to Queen Victoria who wore it in a brooch after it was cut to 800 carats. It was re-cut to a smaller size of 219 carats and later cut again to a more striking oval cut diamond of 108.93 carats before it was set inn the State Crown, worn by Queen Alexandra and Queen Mary. Queen Elizabeth 2 wore it in 1952 for her coronation. The diamond in now part of the British Crown Jewela. The Indian government has now laid claim to the diamond as it was taken by force from this country.

The Great Moghul was also found in 1650 near Kollur in India, according to the French traveller, Tavenier. In the rough it weighed 787.5 carats. Reports say that it was presented to Emperor Shah Jahanin 1656 by Mir Jumla and so was named after the ruler. The Emperor asked Hortensio Borgis, the Venetian diamond-cutter, a lapidary who at that time was domiciled in India, to cut the stone. The work was done so badly that Borgis was forced to pay a heavy fine. When Tavernier last saw the Great Moghul in the treasury of Emperor Aurangzeb in 1665, he described it as looking like an egg and having the form of a very high and round rosette weighing 280 carats. The stone then disappeared and it is possible that it lies in some secret treasury somewhere.

The excelsior, another very large diamond, flawless with a beautiful blue-white colour weighed 971.75 carats and came from the Jagersfontein mine in South Africa. It was afterwards renamed the 'Jubilee,' to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the accession of Queen Victoria. The African who found it in a spade of gravel on June 30, 1893 was rewarded 500 in money and a horse equipped with saddle and bridle. Two years later, its value varied between 1,000,000. The rough stone, however, had a black spot near centre of its mass that was removed by cleaving the stone in two. The larger portion yielded a perfect brilliant weighing 239 carats. A smaller, 18-carat marquise stone was cut from the remaining portion.

Diamond Mining

In the conventional sawing and drilling of a diamond, diamond particles continuously chip the stone at high speed. There are occasions when this method fails, such as when a hard 'knaat' is encountered, an average packet of rough diamonds contains about three to five per cent knaats. If the knaats are more than about one millimetre in size within the rough stone, they could be seen and so rejected. Smaller inclusions are dangerous, as they could damage the saw blades or the scaifes. Again, a hard inclusion might cause vibration of the thin saw blade and shatter it, unless the cutting is slowed down so much that a five carat knaat takes several weeks to cut. Laser drilling and sawing overcomes these problems. In addition, unlike the conventional saw or drill, there is no physical contact between the laser hardware and the stone. Consequently, oil residues or material of the saw blade do not contaminate the stone.

When the focused laser beam hits the stone at a very small spot and the beam energy is absorbed, the temperature at the target spot shoots up to more than 3000C. The heating is extremely fast and so is the cooling, beacuse of the pulsed nature of the laser light. Consequently, the rest of the stone is not heated by the laser beam. To increase the absorption of the laser light by the diamond, a spot of graphite is first apllied to the entrance point of the desired hole. As the beam hits the stone this graphite spot absorbs all the energy of the laser and evaporates. The diamond below the spot becomes graphite locally because of the high temperature and, in turn, provides an absorptive spot. The diamond is therefore cut by evaporation and not by abrasion. The hole produced by the beam is V shaped and as it gets deeper, it becomes wider. However, good design of the optics of the laser system can narroe the diameter of the hole to less than ten microns. The weight loss of the diamond by laser sawing is therefore much less than by conventional sawing, provided special care is taken. Twinned or grained crystals of diamond are cut in a few hours instead of the weeks required by conventional sawing.

Laser sawing is therefore superior to conventional methods, as the cuts can be made irrespective of crystallographic direction. Accuracies of twenty-five microns are routine, limited only by the movement of the holder and vibrations of the table. When a laser is employed for kerfing, the kerf can be as thin as 0.3 micron. Kerf depths of four-hundred micron are achieved in about twenty-five seconds.

The laser beam is produced by flashing light from xenon flash tubes on to a rod of laser material. The rod absorbs this energy and emits it as an exceedingly parallel and coherent beam. The laser material is a solid rod of ruby, Neodymium glass (Nd glass) or Neodymium aluminum garnet (NdYGA,) with accurately parallel and polished faces. Carbon dioxide gas in a quartz tube also acts as a laser material but the focusing is not as fine as with a solid rod. A serious problem in all high power lasers is the overheating of the laser material and the choice of the laser equipment depends on the use that is made of the system.

A typical laser drilling or cutting machine used for diamond processing would have a pulsed NdYAG emitting light of wavelength of 1060 nm, with a peak power one to twenty five kilowatt and a pulse width of 0.2 microseconds. The repetition rate of the pulses is ten to ten housand per second. Other factors affect laser drilling, of holes than the minimal requirements of power density. Not only are the diameter and the depth of the hole dependent on the wavelength of the laser light, but they are also determined by the mode of the laser output. The lowest order mode and the shortest wavelength give the sharpest focussed spot.

World Diamond Trade

Europeans once believed that the cutting or alteration of a diamond would destroy its magical properties, but sometime after 1330 AD, cutters in Venice learned how to shape polish a diamond with an iron wheel coated with diamond dust to produce greater brilliance. The city then became the first centre for diamond trading. Over the next century, diamond traders, mainly Jews escaping from persecution, shifted to Bruges and Paris, and laser to Antwerp. They marketed their diamonds to European jewellers, who began to set diamonds in jewels and royal regalia during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

The diamonds came from Indian mines. Among the merchants who sailed east seeking to profit from the sale of diamonds and spices was the great Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama. He was one of the first to sail via the Cape of Good Hope, hoping to avoid the Arab pirates who roved the Arabian Sea. He landed near Goa and this port became the Portuguese trading centre in India, and a flourishing trade in diamonds developed from Goa to Lisbon and then on to Antwerp.

The discovery of diamonds in Brazil caused the collapse of the diamond market in 1725 although it was initially advertised that these diamonds came from India. India and Brazil were the main sources of diamond up until 1851. Fifteen years later, the children of an African farmer picked up a white pebble that turned out to be a 21-carat diamond. This was followed soon afterwards by the discovery of another stone of 83 carats. These finds triggered a major diamond rush in South Africa and Rhodesia that later expanded into mining for gold and copper. Deep volcanic pipes that were apparently an inexhaustible source of diamond were then located, mined and factories started production.

In 1908, diamonds were found near the sea shore in South West Africa and by 1925, the stones that were found below thirty feet of sand on the coast of Namaqualand as well as north of the Orange River, proved to be the richest source of high quality gems. An unbelievable twenty-five per cent of the gathered stones were of the finest quality. Prospecting then began in the Belgian Congo; now Congo provides sixty per cent of world diamond output. Ghana, Sierra Leone and Tanganyika and the diamond fields in Yakutia in Russia, too, are now rich sources of diamonds. Mir, a hundred and sixty miles from a port on the river Lena was developed and yielded diamonds of more than four carats per tonne. The total production of gem quality diamonds inthe world is around thirty-one million carats, most of it being from Zaire.

When, in 1872, the great diamond rush had more than fifty-thousand miners looking for diamonds and chaotic conditions reigned, Cecil Rhodes bought them all out and formed the De Beers Consolidated Mines Company. With the help of the British government, this company began to take control of most of the diamond activity in South Africa and later formed the Diamond Trading Company (DTC). The DTC rigidly controled and still controls the sale of all diamonds. Even a part of the Russian diamonds has to be channelled through it. This cartelisation of the sale of diamonds has benefited the customer because the company stabilises the price by restricting the supply of rough diamonds. In principle, this control by a single company should make diamonds a good investment, but in practice other market forces prevail.

The profits of diamond mines depend mostly on gem quality stones. For example, twenty per cent of the diamonds mined in Congo is of gem quality. These gemstones are sent to London, where they are sorted according to their shape, quality, colour and size into about two thousand categories. The quality of the stones is judged according to the transparency and the flaws abserved. Colour makes a big difference to the value of the stone. The best are clear 'white' or colours stones, while pink, pastel green or blue stones have a special rarity value. The yellow or brown stones are very common and do not count for much. All diamonds are valued and collected into packets and sold in London to selected buyers. These 'sight holders' are offered the packets on a 'take it or leave it' basis. No selection is allowed. Sight holders then take the stones in their packets back to their own conutries for cutting and polishing.

A number of rough diamonds originate in the disturbed war zones of Angola or the Congo. Most of these 'conflict diamonds' from Congo and Sierra Leone appear to be smuggled into Zimbabwe. Liberia and other neighbouring countries. Diamond experts believe that only about a third of Congo's annual diamond production in being sold through the country's official market. Human rights groups have been concerned that the trade in these diamonds is being used ti finance rebel groups fighting in African countries. One such group based in London showed that in October 1998, Be Beers pumped large amounts of money into rebel coffers by purchasing diamonds from unrecognized sources in the Congo and Angola. Refuting these charges, the DTC now guarantees that one of its diamonds originate from African rebels, but come instead from its own mines is South Africa, Botswanna or Namibia, or are bought from mines in Russia or Australia. However, even a powerful organization like De Beers cannot totally stop diamonds from being smuggled from the war zones in exchange for arms or drugs. Thought perhaps only three percent come from these areas, in spite of strict vigilance, some conflict diamonds from the war zones of Africa will continue to leak into the market until the diamond industry finds a way to stop it.

Birthstone of April (Diamond)

April: Diamond may be the birthstone for this month but all men and women fancy this gem. More or less standard for engagement rings, it is bougth to celebrate the tenth and sixtieth wedding anniversaries. In India it is the gem of Shukra (Venus), whose blessing are invoked for an everlasting marriage. As it safeguarded virtue, a man would secretly place a diamond under the pillow of his wife to make her reveal secrets in her artistic quality of the person. It removes evil, creates as aura of goodness, augurs a luxurious life and enchances sexual power. For best results, a diamond of one carat or bigger should be worn set in gold platinum on the index finger of the right hand.

All about diamonds

Of all precious stones, diamond has been and is the most desired, thought it does not have the attractive colour of emerald or ruby. Over the centuries this passion for diamonds has endowed the stones with histories that are rich with mysticism, intrigue, adventure and romance. Found rarely inm nature, the gemstones is the hardest and most durable material on earth. More important, the mining and sale of diamonds has been so rigidly controlled, that the price of the stones has been increasing steadily over the last three centuries.

Chemists and crystallographers have determined that the diamond is merely pure carbon crystallised in a structure different from that of common graphite and charcoal. As early as 1675 AD, Sir Isaac Newton concluded that diamond would burn in air twenty years later, Averani and Targioni demostrated this at the Accademia del Cimento of Florence. They put a diamond in the intense heat of a fierce charcoal fire and saw the stone gradually decrease in size and finally disappear.

Millions of years ago, organic material such as tress or other living creatures died and, exposed to the heat of those times, became charcoal. This carbon, trapped within molten rock and subjected to intense pressures and temperatures of over 3000C over thousands of years, slowly crystallised into clear hard diamond. Natural volcanic eruptions took the material to the surface of the earth. Later, erosion by the sun and rain and other climatic changes broke up the soil containing the diamonds and scattered it and the gemstones over river beds. These 'alluvial' deposists are found on the surface of river beds, on the rough pebbled sea bed or in gravel down to twenty metres beneath the sand. Diamonds are also mined by digging within the bluish ground of 'kimberlite', from deep inside the earth, down volcanic pipes of around half a kilometre diameter through which molten material once forced its way up. A productive mine usually yields a gram of diamonds from about three-hundred tonnes of ore.

Diamond Tools

The edge of quality, shining and soft cutting is the main prime concern areas of DIAMOND TOOLS. We had set an edge on diamond cutting tools [faceting tools]. International are is where we focus to our durability and perfection. Our large clientele list of customers around the world has proven our tools on quality and durability.


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To give a perfect edge or shine to precious metals [gold, silver, or platinum] and other metals [ brass, copper or aluminum] you need more perfect diamond cutting tools [faceting tools]. These tools are used for faceting & designing non-ferrous metals too. We have a system, that gives our tools the quality and the durability that is needed. QUALITY CONTROL [QC] is emphasized on brazing, turning, planning and many other factors, that helps our tools to be more perfect in high quality. Selected diamond is used as a raw material to give you the value for your money.



TYPE OF TOOLS

American Button OR Fly Wheel Tool
Range: 1 to 3 m.m. Angle: 140 Degrees.



Horizontal Diamond Tool
Range: 1 to 8 m.m. Angle: 140 Degrees






Horizontal in Tablet Diamond Tool
Range: 1 to 8 m.m. Angle: 130 Degrees




Hammer Diamond Tool
Range: 1 to 3 m.m.


CNC Machine Tool
Range: 1 to 3 m.m.


Turning Tool
Range: 1 to 8 m.m.


Pencil Turning Tool
Range: 1 to 3 m.m.

PACKAGING MATERIAL





Special Packaging is done to that so damage occurs to the product.

Note: Extra Charges for Concave, Convex or any other lining on diamond.

World Diamond Trade

Europeans once believed that the cutting or alteration of a diamond would destroy its magical properties, but sometime after 1330AD, cutters in Venice learned how to shape and polish a diamond with an iron wheel coated with diamond dust to produce greater brilliance. The city then became the first centre for diamond trading. Over the next century, diamond traders, mainly Jews escaping from persecution, shifted to Bruges and Paris, and later to Antwerp. They marketed their diamonds to European jewellers, who began to set diamonds in jewels and royal regalia during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

The diamonds came from Indian mines as well. Among the merchants who sailed east seeking to profit from the sale of diamonds and spices was the great Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama. He was one of the first to sail via the Cape of Good Hope, hoping to avoid the Arab pirates who roved the Arabian Sea. He landed near Goa and this port became the Portuguese trading center in India, and a flourishing trade in diamonds developed from Goa to Lisbon and then on to Antwerp.

The discovery of diamonds in Brazil caused the collapse of the diamond market in 1725 although it was initially advertised that these diamonds came from India. India and Brazil were the main sources of diamonds up until 1851. Fifteen years later, a child of an African farmer picked up a white pebble that turned out to be a 21-carat diamond. This was followed soon afterwards by the discovery of another stone of 83-carats. These finds triggered a major diamond rush in South Africa and Rhodesia that later expanded in to mining for gold and coper. Deep volcanic pipes that were apparently an inexhaustible source of diamonds were then located, mined and factories started production.

World Famous Diamonds

The price per gram of a diamond increases with its weight but stones beyond a certain size are so rare that they cannot be valued on this scale. The few very large and spectacular diamonds are priceless and can trace their complex and controversial history through tales of war, intrigue and love. It is, in fact, the story of their passage through the lives of several owners and not their size, lustre or other properties that determines the price that they command.

The Kohinoor or the 'Mountain of Light' diamond was found two thousand five hundred years ago by a villager of Matanga in Kollur in Andra Pradesh, India. Old palm leaf manuscripts record the weight of the rough stone as 1986 carats. Sanskrit legends report that the Karna, the king of Anga, wore this diamond in his crown to give him invincibility during the great Mahabharata war. The stone later came into the possession of Emperor Vikramaditya of Ujjain (60BC). During the early Persian invasion of India, the diamond was apparently taken to the court of Darius the Great but after the break up of the Persian Empire, the gem found its way back to India. There is recorded evidence that the Kohinoor was with the family of the Rajah of Malwa in India. For several centuries, having been passed down from generation to generation. When the Moghul invated the India, Sultan Babar, the first of the Moghul emperors, acquired the diamond in 1340AD. It was hidden in the treasury for about two centuries and in 1526 the diamond was set as one of the peacock's eyes in the famous Peacock Throne of Shah Jahan.

In 1979, Nadir Shah of Persia, invated India and captured Delhi and seized the Peacock Throne but could not find the Kohinoor diamond. He later learn from that the Moghul emperor had hidden the stone in his turban. Historians disagree about the source of the name of the stone and insist that the name was variant on Kollur, where it was found.

Improving Diamonds - Part IV

Diamonds must be heated only in vacuum or else will burn or turn into graphite. Even at low temperatures of 300C to 400C, cracks and other defects that were hidden within the stone appear. Above 1500C, diamond turns to graphite even in vacuum unless it is kept under very high pressures.

Natural pink diamonds are rare, expensive and in demand. Recently it was reported that selected light brown diamonds do sometimes turn pink after irradiation and heating and this led to a scramble to make pink diamonds. Soon afterwards, large quantities of pink diamonds were available in the market; these looked better than their naturally colored counterparts.

A note of caution must be sounded in regard to the treatment of diamonds. The ultimate color that a diamond takes on after irradiation and heating depends entirely on the impurity atoms and their arrangements within the stone. Apparently, if a diamond lacks nitrogen within it, it can be given a pink color. Rough diamonds from various sources are mixed before they come to be cut in India and Sri Lanka. As a result, it is near impossible to predict that color a diamond will finally achieve. Experienced traders claims to be able to select the proper stones for treatment but they are not always successful

One thing must be made very clear. Under no circumstances can an off-color diamond ever be made whiter or colorless! The original color of a diamond, whether it is yellow or brown, cannot be removed by any simple means. One can merely add another color to mask the original shades. The new high pressure, high temperature (HPHT) techniques described later, however, claims to bleach brown diamonds to some extent, but this process it extremely expensive and probably useful only for large stones. Though undesirable colors can be masked by treatment, the clarity of the stone cannot be improved. Those faults are repaired by laser drilling and fracture filling, as described earlier.

Natural diamonds are much more expensive than artificially colored ones. A customer who buys a fancy colored natural diamond has to be assured that he is not being cheated. Some kind of certification by a gem testing laboratory is therefore necessary. In the USA and Belgium, any treatment applied to a diamond must be disclosed to the buyer. When a colored diamond of unknown origin comes into the market, tests have to be made to determine the origin of the color.

Once any induce radioactivity disappears below background levels, it becomes difficult to say if it has been treated. Perhaps electron spin resonance measurements (ESR) and optical absorption spectroscopy done on the stone when it is kept at -160C may determine the history of any treatment. These measurements are expensive and so it is not worth testing a diamond weighting less than 2 carats. The trade assumes that all small colored diamonds have been irradiated, unless proven otherwise.

These sophisticated measurements would then fix the value of the stone. Spectroscopic tests find that the treatment invariably produces as absorption line at a wavelength of 595nm, but heating the stone for several hours at 900C seems to destroy this line. Irradiated green diamonds almost always display a distinct absorption line at 741nm. Yellow treated stones absorbs at 640nm or at 595nm, the two lines accompanied by a 504nm line and sometimes one at 985nm. Only the relative intensity of these lines decides whether the color is natural or not. Therefore a stone with strong absorption lines at 595nm and at 496nm and probably another at 504nm is almost certainly treated, though some naturally colored diamonds show only the 504nm absorption line. However these criteria are not definite as some diamonds show contrary characteristics.

Improving Diamonds - Part III

Electron bombardment causes a change in the color of diamond as long as they energy of the electrons is enough to knock out atoms from their positions in the lattice. In addition, the energy must also be so high that the electrons penetrate more or less uniformly through the stone, or else the color is confined to the surface. Electrons from a high-energy accelerator knock out atoms to a position intermediate between other atoms, leaving a hole in the lattice. Such hole interstitial pairs are called point defects and they produce a light blue shade, reasonably similar to those very sought after Blue Jaeger. With increasing electron bombardment, this blue gets deeper as the irradiation increases the number of defects. At much higher electron energies, the carbon atom that is knocked out has enough energy to knock out other atoms and a cascade of displacements results. The consequent heavy damage imparts a green color to the crystal.

The most economical method to color a diamond quickly and permanently is to put it into a nuclear reactor inside which large numbers of high speed neutrons fly around. Neutrons do not carry any electric charge and so are not stopped by the nuclei of atoms in the crystal. Neutron irradiation therefore induces a uniform color in the diamond. A neutron being a heavy particle of weight two thousand times that of an electron is able to knock out carbon atoms even at relatively low energy. Again, a high energy neutron that collides with a carbon atom can give it enough momentum to hit other atoms and cause a major series of displacements. Depending on the length of neutron irradiation, the color can be regulated from a blue green tinge to emerald green to a very dark green and on to almost black. Badly flawed stones of poor color have thus been made a lustrous black by heavy neutron irradiation, hiding all the imperfections. The color and its intensity can be just right to offset the original unwanted shade and for this a certain artistic judgment is required.

There have been fears that anything put in to a nuclear reactor would turn dangerously radioactive. Diamond is pure carbon that does not become radioactive though trace impurities present in parts per million may cause some radioactivity. This activity dies down in a few days, but as a safety precaution, neutron treated diamond should be monitored carefully before release. Since slow neutrons are more effective in causing radioactivity, irradiation is best done in a fast reactor or a swimming pool reactor. Rumors that neutron irradiated black diamonds were passed off as natural stones and were a radiation hazards are groundless. In any case, some radioactivity is already present in the human body from the environment and from food and water; compared to this, the activity from colored diamonds is trivial. It is estimated that one has to wear jewelry with 3000 carats of treated diamonds to match the radioactivity already present in one’s body!

After irradiation, the induced color fades to some extent with the diamond is slowly heated at low temperatures of around 300C, but the produced color never completely disappears. If the stone is suddenly heated to a high temperature of about 900C, the defects produced by irradiation move around or migrate in the crystal and finally gather in clusters. Such defect clusters are associated with a rage of shades, from amber, orange and canary yellow to green, blue, red, or gold.

Improving Diamonds - Part II

When the atoms of carbon in diamond are arranged in a perfect formation, when the crystal lattice is perfect, the stone is colorless. This perfect diamond has a band gap of 5.6eV which can be bridged only by ultraviolet light. Such a perfect diamond therefore absorbs light only beyond the ultraviolet and these stones are colorless, and graded as pure white. More usually, impurity atoms of nitrogen, boron, manganese, or iron may be present in the concentration of a few parts per billion. These impurities are different in size from carbon and so distort the crystal lattice and cause defects levels within the band gap, leading to absorption in the visible regions. In contrast to colored stones like sapphire and ruby, the color is not related to the impurity, but to the defect in the crystal lattice arrangement. The diamond then appears in pale shades of yellow, brown, green or even blue. About seventy years ago, these pale blue diamonds were found in the Jaegersfontein mines in South Africa and are called Blue Jaegers. Slightly yellow and brown stones are the most common and therefore may be up to ten times cheaper than the best white stones.

In contrast to sapphire and ruby, impurity elements that cause color in diamond cannot be removed. Those who claim to bleach diamonds by heating with secret powders are deceiving the public.

Nuclear particles can knock carbon atoms of the diamond crystal lattice out of their place and thereby change the properties of the stone permanently. Irradiation of diamond by atomic particles results in a change in the color of the stone. The user of atomic radiation to improve diamonds has proved to be profitable. Poor color diamonds are not stable and remain with the dealers as dead stock. If these were treated to become novel colors like green, blue, pink or red and retailed with proper marketing and sales publicity, it could open up an entirely new market for jewelry. Soon after the discovery of radioactivity by Becquerel and Curies, scientists investigated the effects of newly discovered atomic rays on precious stones. Sir William Crookes found in 1904 that when exposed alpha rays from radium salts, diamonds turn green. These stones are housed in British Museum in London and their green color is evidence that the color is permanent. The diamonds are, however, radio active and even prolonged chemical washing did not remove the activity.

When the cyclotron was invented, diamonds were exposed to high energy beam from this machine. Dark green ‘cyclotroned’ diamonds resulted from the irradiation. But even at the high energies at which they emerge from the machine, the particles are stopped at a very shallow depth. The deep color is confined to near the surface and may be detected by the so called umbrella effect. Since the a great deal of research has been done on the irradiation of diamonds and other gemstones with beams of various particles and rays such as electromagnetic radiation (ultraviolet light, x-rays and gamma rays), electrons and heavier particles like neutrons, protons, and alpha particles.

Electromagnetic radiation has no effect on diamonds. X-rays and ultraviolet light shining on diamonds make some of them fluoresce, but there is no permanent change. Gamma rays do not color diamonds because they are not able to displace atoms in the diamond lattice, though it has been reported that they cause some increase in the luster. This could happen because there is a temporally shift in the electrons from one position in the crystal to another. Gentle warming or exposure to sunlight reverses any effect that is produced.

Improving Diamonds - Part I

The price of a diamond is determines by its physical properties and the rarer the stone, the more valuable it is. Most diamonds are somewhat yellow or brown in color and only about twenty per cent of rough stones from the mines yield flawless and color less diamonds. Pure white and flawless diamonds are therefore much in demand and expensive. Diamonds in deep shades of yellow, blue, green or even red are extremely rare in nature and so count as expensive collector’s items. Even rarer among these richly colored stones are the photochromic or chameleon diamonds that changes their color slowly on exposure to light. Obviously there is great profit if a diamond can be colored to a deep shade or made photochromic.

Jewelers have tried to enhance the color of gemstones for centuries by painting or dying the gem but tricks of this kind can easily be detected. As long ago as 1568AD, Benvenuto Cellini of Firenze dyed commonly available yellow diamonds with blue indigo to turn them green and sold as rarities.

The dye faded soon in time as all dyes do. In the last few years, a new process has been developed whereby a coat of colored synthetic diamond film is applied to the lower-girdle facets of a polished stone in order to simulate color in set diamonds. This is more stable than dying. The diamond film can withstand temperature of up to 600C and this is not affected even when the stones are heated to 600C during setting. However the coating will come off or be damaged when the diamond is re-cut or re-polished.

After cutting and polishing a diamond may exhibit cracks or metal inclusions that are seen as black or brown spots. Such stones are rejected, as they are supposed to bring bad luck. The trade has methods to remove these spots and hide the cracks and flaws. A highly focused laser beam is used to drill a very small hole up to the spot in the diamond. The stone is then boiled as acid to dissolve the inclusion. The tubular hole that reaches the surface is then filled with some colorless plastic or resin of high refractive index. The hole and filling are so small that a jeweler’s loupe cannot detect that the stone has been repaired. However, it is hardly worth doing this for small diamonds.

Microscopic examination of the filled stone can reveal that it has been doctored. When the treated diamond is tilted back and forth under a microscope, the reflected color sometimes changes from orange to blue and back to orange again in a flashing manner. The plastic filler also appears glassy, with an unnatural, melted look. Often air bubbles are trapped in the filler and near the surface there could be a cracked appearance.

The trouble with the plastic or resin filling is that in time; the plastic discolors, making the stone look worse than it did before the filling took place. A better but more difficult process forces lead glass of high refractive index into the hole, making a more permanent seal. Modern techniques using X-Rays can detect this lead glass filling as the filled areas appear opaque to x-rays. Another method for detecting this fracture filling is to examine the diamond by x-ray fluorescence, now commonly used to check gold purity. The lead in the glass filling signals it presence in the fluorescence detector.

Cutting and polishing diamonds

India has always been regarded as the natural and ancient home of the diamonds. Up to 1728 the whole world’s supply of diamonds was found in the deccan plateu in the valleys and on the beds of streams to a depth of twelve to sixteen feet of earth. Placed there by the gods as a gem endowed with magical qualities, Indians revered the diamond as far back as 1500 BC, the age of the Vedas.

During those ancient times, diamonds were not cut. The rough stones were mounted as such in jewellery, in helmets and on swords. This is why Indians who wrote on gems, such as Buddhabhatta, Thakkura Pheru describe the shape, and nature of rough diamonds in great detail. For example, Thakkura Pheru wrote in 1315 AD: “the best rough diamond has symmetric facets, free of impurities, sparkling, flawless and ligh in weight.”

Being the hardest known mineral in nature, only diamonds can cut or abrade other diamonds. Artisan used this property to best advantage; they rubbed one diamond against another for months to get the shape they wanted. They were expert in the art of grinding and polishing diamond crystals and kept gemstone shaping a family secret, not to be revealed to the outside world. It is likely that their techniques dated back thousands of years, but there is hardly any mention of this in Indian literature. Ancient texts state that while the diamonds was extremely hard and indestructible, it could easily be split by a light blow along certain directions and that the earliest diamond workers employed such techniques to remove heavy flows and cracks and to smooth the faces of crystals. Kautilya in this Artbhashastra wrote of the ability of diamond to scratch hard metals and other gemstones. It is possible that Indian workers tried to cut and polish diamonds with other diamonds as early as the first century BC. In Europe too, as early as 77 AD, engravers embedded diamond fragments in iron to make cutting tools. According to Pliny, these tools could in turn cut diamonds. During his travels in India in the eighteenth century Tavernier who wrote extensively on the gemstone industry in the country, found artisan in India were using iron wheels with diamond grit to remove flaws in diamond crystals. At the time of his visit, most Indians were merely polishing rough stones that had regular crystallized shapes. Faults like inclusions and grains were removed by grinding, but deep faults were sought to be hidden by a great number of small facets. Some European workers who had practiced diamond cutting in Europe but had settled in India were given the larger and more expensive stones for cutting. They were better at this work perhaps because they had already attained a higher level of perfection in their work. It has been recorded that as early as 1375 AD, diamond cutters in Germany were active and had even formed a guild in Nurenberg.

Introduction to Diamonds

The mined stones are classified into different varieties

1. Diamonds, well crystallized, transparent and gem quality

2. Bort, boart or bortz, poorly crystallized, grey to brown in color, translucent to opaque and used mostly in industry as an abrasive. The large and black stones of granular crystalline structure found almost exclusively in the state of Bahia in Brazil are also known as carbonado or carbonate.

3. Ballas – spherical masses of minute diamond crystals more or less concentrically arranged. The mass in very hard and rough and has important industrial applications.

Rough diamond crystals are mostly of diameter lass than a millimeter in diameter. Bog crystals are extremely rare and so valuable that they acquire the status of an antique and are known by special and distinctive names. History and legend play a bigger part than the actual inherent value of these stones. They are mostly found as part of the crown jewels of various nations.

A natural diamond mines from the earth always has inclusions of graphatite or other minerals that are visible as dark sports in the rough stone. Voids often filled with as are visible as white or shiny spots within the stone. Stones that do not have any inclusions even under 50x magnification are extremely rare and are collectors items.

Carbons atoms arranged in inter-penetrating face-centered cubic lattices form the crystal structure of diamonds. An infinitely large crystal would be totally colorless and transparent except to ultraviolet light of wavelengths shorter than 230nm. However, all natural diamonds contain defects in the crystal lattice as well as impurity elements and these defects cause color in the stone. Again, the growth patterns may abruptly change, with further layers becoming mirror images of the earlier growth. The twining that often occurs within the crystal makes the crystals very hard to cut and they are called macles.

Diamonds have been found all over the world, the most ancient and famous being old Indian deposits that were worked from earliest times. Till about the late 1700s, all the diamonds in the world were found in fields and on river beds, mostly near Hyrdabad in the Deccan plateau. Large stones like the Kohinoor were found there around 1300AD. The town of Golconda so became the center of the diamond trade of the world. In spite of the output from India, Borneo, and to some extent Brazil, diamonds were very rare. Valuable diamond fields in the gold mining area of Minas Geraiswere discovered in Brazil about 1725. Portuguese merchants took Brazillian diamonds to Goa, India, to pass them off as Indian stones. Mining was carried out so intensively in Brazil that the main areas were almost exhausted within twenty years.

At about the time that the Brazilian fields were being depleted, the first diamond field of South Africa was discovered in 1886Ad, when children of a Boer farmer found “a pretty pebble” in the dandy bed of the Vaal River. Four years later, diamonds were found in the earth far from a river source, and the practice of dry-digging for diamonds was born. More sophisticated mining techniques allowed deeper subterranean digging, as well as more efficient river marine mining than ever before. By 1871 world annual production, mostly from South Africa, exceeded a million carats. Soon South Africa had the monopoly for diamond production, until major deposits ere found in Siberian permafrost in 1954. Currently Western Canada is the site of the world’s newest diamond rush. Diamonds have also been found in Urals and in Australia and these sources compete with South Africa.

Diamonds are extensively used in industry, but are better known for their use as gemstones. The value of a diamond depends in size, quality and shape. In the seventeenth century, Tavernier recorded that the value of a diamond was proportional to the squire of the weight, and this is still true. The most popular cut as a gemstone is the brilliant, a round cut with 58 facets that was developed to obtain the maximum brilliance and fire from the stone. There are also other fancy cuts like the kite, triangle, and baguette. The term melee refers to stones cut from small fragments of larger rough stones, obtained after cutting. Approximately 8-16 such stones together weight one carat, and many of these small stones are cut with 58 facets. Similar melee stones are cut with only 18 facets and maybe as small as 0.01 carat each.

Merchants found that the dried brown fruit of the locust tree, which looked like a horn, had seeds of an extraordinary uniform weight. In course of time, the seed, the keration or carat became the standard for weighing diamonds and gold. Now the standard weight for diamonds is the carat (200mg), rather than the more picturesque seed.

When heated in oxygen above 650C, a coating of graphite forms on the diamond. In an inert atmosphere, the transition to graphite occurs above 1570C. Diamond is extremely inert to acids and chemicals until heated to 1020K, but sodium nitrate attacks it at 430C and metals react to form carbides. At pressures of 70,000 atmospheres and 2500C, graphite may crystallize into diamond. The specific gravity of diamond is 3.5 and its refractive index is 2.4 as against 1.5 for glass and 1.33 for water. Diamond also has high dispersion and this gives fire to the crystal. Diamond conducts heat but is a good electrical insulator; this is a sure way to detect a real stone from fakes.

Almost all diamonds contain impurity atoms, mainly nitrogen and boron, but these cannot be seen even at the highest magnification. The effect of these impurities is to change the properties of the stone, mostly by giving it a light color. For instance, the nitrogen tends to collect into small clusters of two to three atoms and the interactions between the carbon and nitrogen atoms create new energy levels in the crystal. An optical center is formed that absorbs light of wavelengths longer than 230nm. Natural diamonds may have several such optical centers of different configurations. When a single nitrogen atom substitutes for a carbon atom, an N3 optical center is formed and the ultraviolet absorption edge comes close to the visible region. The “A” optical center produced when nitrogen atoms replace 2 adjacent carbon atoms gives substantial infrared absorption in the region 10,000 to 7000nm. An arrangement of 4 nitrogen atoms around a missing carbon atom gives a B center with the result that the ultraviolet absorption is lowered through the infrared spectra of A and B centers as similar. The addiction of a nearby vacancy in the carbon lattice results in the so-called H3 and H4 centers.

Natural diamonds contain these optical centers in randomly variable concentration and gemologists label the type of diamond according to the absorption spectrum. Most diamonds have N3, A and B centers and these are the Type I sort. Type Ia diamonds contain primarily A and B centers, but if N3 centers are predominant, it becomes Type Ib. the Type Ia is further divided into Type IaA and Type IaB according to whether there are greater A or B centers. Type II diamonds have little or no nitrogen in them but may contain boron that makes them electrically conducting; these are the somewhat rare type IIb semi-conducting stones. In nature, it is possible to find stones which are of more than one type. Synthetic diamonds are usually Type Ib and may have up to ten percent of iron and nickel as contamination from the process. Ultraviolet, X-rays and electrons excite luminescence in diamond that is usually blue though often yellow and green colors are seen.

In general though, the color of diamond is not directly related to the impurities and their concentrations but us due to defects produced in the lattice by the impurity atoms. Bombardment of the crystal by atomic particles can knock out carbon atoms from their positions in the crystal lattice, produce defects and so induce color. Gamma rays and X-rays do not have any mass and so cannot displace the carbon atoms and thus do not produce defects.

Exposed to a stream of high energy electrons, the diamonds attain a blue shade, the depth depending on the penetration of the electron into the stone. Electron-hole pairs are trapped at the defects that absorb red light and so color the stone blue, but this color fades with gentle heating. A high energy electron colliding with a carbon atom could give it enough energy for it to knock other carbon atoms out of their places. For example electrons of 13 MeV from a big accelerator can give a carbon atom a maximum energy of 35 KeV; this atom is capable of displacing about a hundred other atoms. This cascade of collisions tends to make the diamond greenish in color. Neutrons and alpha particles are far more effective in transferring energy to the carbon atoms and the cascade of collisions turn the diamonds into a definite green color. Even the diamond only a small distance and the color is a surface effect that may disappear when the stone is polished.

Diamonds in India - Part II

Kurnool District: A conglomerate bed about ten meters thick is found here. Diamonds occurred and still appear in the layers of this bed as small blue, green or yellow grains. The old kingdoms of Bijapur and Golconda had 38 diamond mines close to the Krishna river and other mines have also been reported by travelers. In general the mines were located in alluvium or river gravel, sedimentary rocks or archean crystalline rocks. The other areas where stones were found after rain were near the Banganapalle conglomerates. The layers were mines by sinking shafts of about 3-5 meters depth with galleries going along the seam. However, these diamonds were of poor quality being colored small and highly flowed.

Mines at Komarulu and Dhone have produced diamonds of medium quality but on the other hand the Lanjapolur stones were of a better grade. However the mines generated no revenue since 1813. These mines at Ramallakota and Varakaru produced stones of excellent quality, though of very small size. According to Tavernier, these stones were extracted from sand or the surrounding earth that occupied narrow veins in the rock. Near Virayapalle the diamonds yield was incredibly large, one carat of flawless and well formed gemstones from seven tones of ore. But since 1910 there has apparently been no output or even mining operations in this area.

Guntur District: the largest mining operations were at Kollur and the location of this mine was referred to by Tavernier as “color” and sometimes as Quolore. In 1645 it employed nearly sixty-thousand persons in very productive mining operations. Three decade later, the tract appeared to have been exhausted and it is now deserted. Legend has it that the Kohinoor or the great Mogul was found here.

Krishna District: The mines at Partiala, north-west of Vijayawada, yielded mainly yellowish or reddish colored diamonds in gravel some ten meters below the surface. The description by Scott Tallies with the procedures described by Tavernier at Kollur except for the curious fact that at Partiala, women were not allowed near the mines. Contemporary accounts state that the famous pit diamond came from one of these mines. The Kodavatakallu mines between the Muniair and the Krishna rivers produced several bullock cart loads of diamonds according to local lore.

Bengal: The Ain-i-Akbari refers to a diamond mines near Hirpah in Burdwasdistrict but this is now discounted for lack of confirmation.

Bihar: The ancient work, Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri mentions a diamond field near the source of the Sunk river, south of the watershed of the Koel river in Ranchi district. However, no stones of any value have been found here in recent times. Tavernier refers to the Soumelapur mines close to the village of Simh in Palamau district, where the sands of the Koel river were prospected for diamonds and where large stones were occasionally found.

Madhya Pradesh: Abdul Fazal mentions the mines at Wairagarh. By 1827 these very productive mines were exhausted and by 1843 the abandoned workings were barely visible. Lying between the Panna shale and the upper kaimur sandstone, the diamond containing layer in Panna district is a conglomerate of about 2m thickness. Diamonds occur in the joints and bedding plains of the kaimur sandstones rocks or in the alluvial cover. North-East of Itwa the bed is localized, where reports have it that diamonds are found in the Majhgawan area occur in a volcanic neck filled with agglomerate tuff. The soft and very friable volcanic rock in which diamonds occur is yellow to yellowish green and is a 100km long and about 20km wide. This volcanic pipe is opined to be the main source of diamonds and other such volcanic pipes are thought to exist in the area. Mining in the Panna fields is done by agriculturists between February and June, with claims of 10sqm each. The prospects for diamond mining were reported to be good in 1954, but nothing further was done. The Panna mines are now the only visible Indian source of diamonds for industrial and gem varieties. The production was about 5% lower in 1971 than in the previous year. The total reserves of diamonds are estimated to be 410000 carats in these regions.

Baraunda: Diamonds were once plentiful in this area on the north bank of the Chahala river, but mining ceased after a find of 12-24 stones of which one weight about 118 carats.

Orissa: The gravel bed of the Ib, a tributary of the Mahanadi river a few miles from Sambalpur as well as other tributaries of the Mahanadi as far up as the Mand river have been dredged successfully for diamonds. Between 1804 and 1818 twenty stones were found of which the largest rough found in 1809, weighed 218 carats. The sands from the streams near Bpndesor in Kalahandi have yielded minute diamonds, but a systematic search for larger stones had not been made.

Since 1926, the Panna diamond mining syndicate, the Mahalakshmi diamond mine works and Charkari mining works were the main companies involved in diamond mining. No serious and systematic surveys were made by these companies to look for diamonds. In 1954 Russian assistance was sought for a plan for modernization that would cost 6 million rupees and handle six thousand to seven thousand tones of ore a day, but this effort seems to have failed. At present, any diamonds that may be found must be handed over to the government of India. The diamond officer in Panna records the weight and characteristics of the stones before they are auctioned. The person who found the stones then gets a reward of one quarter of the sale price. Panna production is presently very small in comparison with world output, but the diamonds are on the average priced higher than those from South Africa.

Diamonds in India - Part I

Diamonds were found only in India before the discovery of the Brazilian deposits. The mining operations in Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh dateback to the sixth century AD. The mines of Vindhya Pradesh now in the state of Madhya Pradesh, were said to have produced diamonds worth ten thousand dollars during the reign of Akbar the great. The kings of Golconda and Vijayanagar leased out the shallow mines in the seventeenth century on a royalty system and on condition that rough stones weighting over 25 carats be surrendered to the kings for their personal adornments. In 1662AD,
Mthold, Andreas Sorcery and Adolph Thomson reported that the king received $120000 from the mine operators and stones larger than 10 carats were given to the king. According to Tavernier, between 1632 and 1662 AD, Ramallakota and Kollur were the mining centers, the latter being the most productive in 1645. The quality of the stones was so good and the size so large that the east India Company even considered sending remittances to England in the form of diamonds. The Golapalli and Malavalli mines were most productive in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries but by the nineteenth century production had declined. Though mining operations in Panna in Madhya Pradesh was interrupted for some time, in continues to this day.

The Wairagarh mines of Madhya Pradesh become uneconomical in 1829 and were abandoned in 1840 AD. In the seventeenth century, some diamonds were extracted in Bihar and Orissa, though production increased in the eighteenth century; but by the middle of the nineteenth century there was a decline in mining activity here too. In these regions the mining operations were primitive and consisted mainly of sporadic searches in shallow excavations.

The excavated material was soaked in water for a couple of days, sun dried and powdered in wooden pestles and mortars. The resultant grit was then scanned for gemstones.

Geologists have observed pipe rocks in Wajrakarur, once a flourishing mining area fourteen kilometers south of Guntakal as well as in Panna in Madhya
Pradesh, but they have not located the actual neck of the pipe. Close studies of the geological formations of central India indicate clearly the presence of diamonds in three distinct regions of India. The first is close to the rocks of the Kurnool series in Andhra Pradesh and the Vindhyas in the north. In Ananthapur, Bellary, Cuddapah, Kurnool, Krishna and Godavari districs of Andhra Pradesh, the rocks have weathered and farmers have chanced on diamonds when plugging their fields. The source of these alluvial stones has yet not been traced. The second source of alluvial diamonds extends westwards from the Mahanadi valley in the Sambalpur district of Orissa into Madhya Pradesh, with an extension to the north. Diamonds have
also been discovered in an outcrop of conglomerate that extends over an area of one hundred kilometers by 20km in Panna, Charkari, Bijwar, Ajaigarh, Kothi, Pathar Kacchar, Baraunda and Chobapur.

Geologists have reported that diamonds have been found in various locations in India listed below.

Ananthapur District: Diamonds have been extracted from the crystalline rocks near Bodasanipalle, Ganjikuta, Konganapalle, Lattawaram, Mulakalapenta, Pedda Hoturu and in Wajrakarur in the past. About a century ago, a volcanic neck very similar to the diamond bearing matrix of Kimberley in South Africa was discovered. Miners of that time crushed the ore and washed it on small platforms. In 1885, a small mining company tried unsuccessfully to mine the area but it was only in 1941 that the new Wajrakarur Diamond Company Ltd
found two large stones of around 1.8 carats each. Even today diamonds are occasionally found on the surface east of Wajrakarur after a rain storm, though never close to the neck of the pipe rock. Valuable stones are still found occasionally between Guntakal and Gooty in the village of Kanganapalle. In 1935, a cultivator reportedly picked up a diamond weighing about 36 carats and a few months earlier, a diamond weighing 67.4 carats was found and cut to an exceptionally brilliant stone of 24.6 carats.

Bellary District: While there was evidence of lining near the village of Huvinahadagalli, there are no record of actual finds if large stones.

Cuddapah District: There were attempts to mine the alluvium near hennur. It is reputed that large stones were found there but systematic and organized mining proved unprofitable. The stones were obtained from a gravel bed lying about two meters below the surface but the mines were soon abandoned.