The Diamond Story

The ancient Greeks believed that diamonds were splinters of stars fallen to earth. It was even said by some that they were the tears of the gods.

Another legend has it that there was an inaccessible valley in Central Asia carpeted with diamonds, patrolled by birds of prey in the air and guarded by snakes of murderous gaze on the ground.  However, the truth is that the exact origin of diamonds is still something of a mystery, even to scientists and geologists.

Diamonds have been around for millions of years, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. According to geologists, the youngest volcanic rock that contains diamonds, is about 70 million years old.

They estimate the age of most diamonds to be between  one and three billion years.

A diamond is crystallized carbon, like the graphite in a lead pencil. Carbon is  the fundamental building block of all matter on earth, including humans. Diamonds are the hardest, most durable substance (10 on  Mohs' scale)  ever  discovered by man, and also the purest substance that occurs in nature. They are the product of tremendous heat and pressure, caused when the earth was still being formed.

The diamond is formed at a temperature and pressure so high it is equivalent to that existing 150 miles below the earth's surface. The diamond has a melting point of approximately 4,000 degrees centigrade, which is two and a half times greater than the melting point of steel.  Don't confuse hardness with brittleness. While it is true that nothing except another diamond can cut or scratch a diamond, a sharp blow from a hard object can crack or shatter a diamond.

The word "diamond" comes from the Greek adamas and adamant, meaning unconquerable. The modern spelling originated in the mid-sixteenth century. Before that, the English word for diamond, was dyamound and adamound, as well as the poetic dimound.

Diamonds were first mined in India over 2,800 years ago.  It is recorded that the first men to know diamonds, the Dravidians of India, found them seven or eight centuries before Christ.

From them we get our unit of weight. They balanced the gems on their scales against the seeds of the carob tree (keration), the "cattie" or "carat."  Today the system is standardized and one carat is fixed at 200 milligrams (1/5 of a gram).

The discovery of a peculiar diamond trait, the fact that grease very easily sticks to it, has led to the most popular method of extracting diamonds.  The gravel and earth diggings from the mines are placed on a large slanted table covered with a thick layer of axle-grease to which the diamonds stick while the rest is washed away by a stream of water.

This affinity of diamonds for grease is the reason why diamond jewelry will pick up grease and oils from the wearer's skin and cosmetics and, therefore, should be cleaned regularly. It is more important to clean the back of the diamond than the front,  not just because that is where most of the grease is trapped, but because the back facets will not reflect if they are coated with grease, giving the stone a dull appearance.

Commercial cleaners are available but it's just as effective to scrub the piece with an old toothbrush in a  homemade mixture of  household  ammonia and warm water, rinse well with clean water and dry with paper-towel.

One more thing. Try not to lose your diamond down the sink. While we're on the subject, have your jeweler periodically check the prongs to make sure your diamond is safe.

Diamonds are found on every continent. For some curious reason, the most productive mines are usually found in remote and inaccessible regions.

Today,  the two richest sources of gem-quality diamonds are Botswana, a third world country that relies on these gemstones  for three-quarters of its total revenues,  and Russia, whose bountiful mines are clustered in the frozen Siberian tundra where winter temperatures drop to minus 140 degrees  Fahrenheit and in the summer, mosquitoes swarm so thick that miners must wear protective gear.

The world's top producer, the Argyle Mine (which went into full production in 1987) is  located in the remote northern section of Western Australia where summer temperatures reach nearly 120 degrees in the shade. The bulk of diamonds found there are yellow, champagne and brown. However, most of those diamonds  are only of industrial quality.

The primary trading and cutting centers are in  Antwerp, New York, Tel Aviv and Bombay. They may soon have rivals from new cutting centers in Bangkok and even in China.

London, the home of De Beers, remains the focal trading center.  The diamond market is very important to these countries. For example, in India, where most of the smaller stones are cut, about three quarters of a million people are employed  in the diamond industry.  In Israel, nearly 10,000 are employed in a business that generates about 25% of that country's total export earnings.

The late Sir Ernest Oppenheimer (who became Chairman of De Beers Consolidated Diamond Mines in 1929)  was able to persuade the world's diamond producers to form a co-op, called the Diamond Producers Association, which in 1934 became the all-powerful De Beers "Central Selling Organization" (or CSO).

The CSO, an international cartel, controls over 80%  of the world's rough or uncut  diamond trading. The CSO sells about $4 billion of diamonds a year. That $4 billion in sales is for rough material, before cutting and weight loss, labor charges and various types of wholesale and retail markups. The distribution is regulated by way of 10 yearly sales called Sights which are limited to about 160 Sight-holders, companies around the world with enough capital and facilities to process millions of dollars worth of diamonds every month. These Sights are offered on a take-it or leave-it basis.

The CSO also spends enormous amounts of money to create favorable consumer attitudes toward diamonds. You've probably seen the magazine and television ads featuring  their famous  "A Diamond is Forever"   campaign.

Such commercials have boosted diamond jewelry sales in every major industrialized country in the world. For example, 18 years ago diamond engagement rings were unknown in Japan. Today as a result of heavy advertising, more than 80% of all Japanese brides have diamond engagement rings compared to 70% in the USA. Similar results from this advertising have occurred in Germany, Sweden and, to a lesser extent, most of the Western European countries.

The diamond is and remains the most popular gemstone accounting for about 80% of all U.S. gemstone sales.

More than 100 tons of earth and rock must be excavated and processed to extract just one carat of diamonds. Less than half of these carats is of acceptable jewelry grade;  the rest are "industrials" (diamonds too flawed for use in jewelry).

Quality is another factor of rarity. The better the grade, the rarer the stone. The vast majority of all jewelry grade gems are small diamonds used in clusters or tennis bracelets, etc.

The carat-sized diamond is fewer than one in every 25,000 carats of diamonds mined and top qualities are rarer still.

According to the GIA. grading scale, D flawless is the top quality grade for diamonds. Only about 50 to 100 diamonds of D flawless quality  weighing over 1 carat are found each year.

These statistics are one reason why diamonds cost what they do. Another cost factor is the cutting itself.

A rough diamond is usually in the shape of an octahedron, sort of like two pyramids fused together at the bottom. A lot of diamonds in their rough form are not very attractive at all. They have irregular shapes and resemble  pebbles. Most people would pass  by without a second glance. It is the skill of the craftsmen that unlocks the fiery beauty that lies within.

The first step in diamond cutting is careful planning by the "planner". To facilitate locating the exact position of an inclusion, the planner sometimes polishes one or more flat surfaces on the diamond crystal. This also helps determine the plane or planes along which sawing or cleaving should be undertaken.

Today sawing is much preferred, providing the shape of the rough makes it possible. The weight retention is greater with this method because there is more control as to exactly where to cut.

A cutting agent, consisting of a mixture of diamond powder and olive oil is applied to the sawblade, which is  made of bronze. Depending on the pressure exerted on the blade it can take from two to eight hours just to cut across a 1 carat crystal. 

Since all cutters pay approximately the same for the rough diamond, the difference of making a profit or not is the skill of the cutter and the planner in determining  the position and shape of the cut to get the maximum weight and value  for the finished stone.

Generally,  50%  or more of the diamond is lost during the cutting process.

Diamonds have a very high refractive index. In simple terms, this means the stone sends out all of the light entering it in a brilliant array of flash and color. The flash or fire, the sparkle, is called scintillation, while the overall light coming from the diamond is called brilliance.