surprise!

[lab rat]

I went out yesterday for the first time in a week, expecting not to find anything.? Temperatures are cooling down, and not so many people going to the beach these days.? So I figured I'd keep my expectations low.? But 15 minutes into my hunt I found this beauty-- 32 natural diamonds in 14k gold!

 

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[Leon]

I found 21 diamonds, so you had to go and find 32 didn't ya... ... Just kid'n
Very Nice!, how did you determine they were natural diamonds?
Did you take it to a jewler?, or can you tell yourself?
The Cross on my other post is the first thing I've found to even concider taking to have checked out...
Happy Hunting~

 

[Darren in NC]

sweet labrat. Always pays to go even when it doesn't seem logical

 

[kc in wv]

Nice find

Because of Ivan I only got out 50 minutes total this week. Not very productive

 

[lab rat]

Leon, here's a few pointers I go by to check for natural diamonds:

1) Check under a microscope or hand lens to see if there is grease or oil on the stones-- diamonds are carbon and -love- grease! If the stones are bright and shiny straight out of the ground, be suspicious. If they are dull when you find them, that's usually a good sign. I had to clean this ring up with dish soap and a toothbrush to get it to light up.

2) Check the top facets and edges of the stone for scratches or chips from wear, and check the culet (point underneath) to see if it is a sharp point or chipped off. Diamonds are hard and won't scratch or chip. They can be fractured or cracked, but I'm talking about surface chips, dings, and scratches. If you see these, you've got something other than diamond. All the culet points are sharp on this ring-- none broken or chipped. Almost every CZ I ever found had a chipped culet and scratches on the top facets.

3) Look closely at the edges of the facets, where the faces meet at an angle. This is where you can see wear from abrasion on softer stones, but look carefully to see how 'sharp' the edge itself is from cutting. Softer stones will have facets that look bent or curved. Diamonds are hard to cut and hard to polish, so the angles will be sharp and well defined.

4) Another clue is internal imperfections-- lab-grown imitations rarely have anything inside them, and those that do usually have rounded bubbles. Diamonds (and other natural stones) typically have tiny angular inclusions.

5) Look at the color of the stones. I'm not talking about the color of the flashes of light, but the stone itself in plain white light. Lots of imitation stones are lab manufactured under ideal conditions, so the color rarely varies from a clean bright white. My ring does have color variations between the stones-- some are less white and more tan, gray, or yellow. At first glance this is hard to see, but if you study them under a microscope you can pick up the differences. At least I know all the stones in my ring didn't all come from the same place (ie laboratory).

 

[coinshooter]

Yah, that's all great, but did you use an actual diamond tester?
BTW, nice find LR! I have never met someone with as much luck as you have!!!
Sometimes the best finds are when you least expect it. That's when I found my Amethyst and diamond ring (see my post "Six years of detecting" under Best Finds for photo). On a lunch hour in the middle of winter. 8)