All About Diamonds

If you go shopping for a real diamond ring outside of the network provided here by RealDiamondRings.net, you run the risk of running into those who would take advantage of any lack of knowledge a customer has in order to sell them an inferior product at a higher price. It is best, therefore, to be educated about diamonds as much as possible before you make your final buying decision so that you can know exactly what you should be looking for, and what to avoid.

Diamond Composition

Put simply, diamonds are perfect, tightly bonded carbon atoms that do not come apart easily at all except along their shear lines. Carbon atoms in a diamond form what is known as a covalent bond. Eight carbon atoms make up the repeating lattice that are fundamentally arranged in a cube throughout the gemstone. Thanks to this cubic, symmetrical arrangement, diamonds form into several shapes; the octahedron, dodecahedra and combinations of the two.

Diamond Mining

It used to be that diamonds were found only in India, and then in a few other places in Africa, but now, thanks to advanced mining techniques and mine exploration, diamond mines are found on every continent around the world except Antarctica and Europe. There are generally two types of deposits of diamonds that can be found and mined in the world: the kimberlite and lamproite pipes that come from the earth's mantle to the surface, and other, secondary sources which are created by erosion, such as by a river, which often will carry the diamonds to the sea.

Open pit mining, using heavy machinery to drill, move earth, or sometimes blast through solid rock to get to the diamonds, is the most common type of diamond mining operation in effect today. Once the ore material has been reached, huge hydraulic shovels and ore trucks are used to take it out of the ground in order to separate rock from diamond. Sorting diamonds from the other materials is done with a process that relies on the diamond's high density. One older method uses a washing pan which makes the heavy minerals such as diamonds fall to the bottom and all the rest to float to the top. A grease table further separates the precious stones, since diamonds have a very strange tendency to resist water touching them but they will stick to grease.

Diamond Sorting & Distribution

Once the diamonds have been pulled out of their kimberlite mines, they need to be separated into gemstone quality, near gemstone quality and industrial quality diamonds. Diamonds are also sorted by their sizes or carats. Usually they are broken down into groups that are larger than 1 carat, those that are between 1/10th of a carat and 1 carat and those that are less than 1/10th of a carat. Usually if a diamond is larger than 15 carats it gets special, individual handling.

Diamond Cutting and Gem Making

Diamonds that are of industrial quality are by far the most common type of diamond mined. These diamonds end up being used in chemical polishes to make the substance more abrasive, or as refractors for laser technology, or even are embedded into saws and drill bits to increase their effectiveness.

Gemstone quality diamonds are most often handled by the cartel DeBeers in some form or another, where they are distributed to any number of qualified gem-cutting sources around the world. There the diamonds are evaluated by a trained professional who can see the diamond's fracture points and then apply the precise cuts needed to the stone in order to take off the diamond's rough edges and bring forth a smooth stone more like what the consumer is used to seeing in the store under glass. The diamond must then be chemically washed and prepared, polished, and set into a ring or it can be sold unset.