[Jewelry making - Article 00303] - Re: [Orchid] Sapphires buying

[Downey]

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    You miss out on some very nice stones under the strict guidelines
    you use. As a faceter I can tell you the ONLY thing I would state in
    writing is ;  treatment - UNKNOWN (unless I personally treated it)  
    ,perhaps followed by something like "Most blue topaz is irradiated
    and heated." Or " Citrines can be made by heat treating amethyst".
    Unless you dug it up yourself or diligently observed the 

    excavation,cleaning,cobbing,preforming,cutting and transportation at
    each step YOU ARE GUESSING. On many smaller stones, gemmologists
    can't detect some synthetics much less treatments that duplicate in
    a lab what nature does in the ground. In actuality, the only stone
    that's never been 'enhanced' is the one still undiscovered. It
    starts being 'treated' as soon as the mud is cleaned off. This is
    not to say owners shouldn't be warned about fraudulent, toxic, or
    impermanent issues with ANY jewelry. They sometimes are their own
    worst enemy. You and I know that - say - amber - is not going to
    hold up well in a ring BUT if you don't sell it to 'em they'll just
    buy it down the street. We all know that iolite is a sturdier stone
    than Tanzanite (heat treated zoisite) but the marketing has caused a
    skewing of emotion over logic. Ultimately the same is true for all
    'self adornment'. If people didn't have an emotional attachment to
    'natural' colored stones there'd be no reason to cut anything other
    than CZ. Certainly your cautions about who you do business with are
    very important, especially if they insist that their stones are
    natural. But I can tell you the GIA has found synthetic rubies mixed
    in with natural AT THE MINE. Now how can a cutting house stand
    behind that? They're whistling in the dark. Carl 1 Lucky Texan 

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