Chapter Ten The forging of diamonds.
Did you think your diamond was genuine? Read this chapter then reconsider.
It should not be thought that all high quality diamonds are forged by nature. Today it is relatively simply to make them artificially - to make not just industrial diamonds but the purest highest most expensive flawless gems. This is no theory - it is happening today in secretive De Beers's factories. Not much equipment is needed. I once watched an American government scientist make a gem diamond with an Oxy-acetylene torch.... a colleague enthused "sewage gas makes exceptionally fine white diamonds"
... the Russians have used this method since 1977 and have found that diamonds can be made, not just from methane but also from alcohol or almost any organic substance containing carbon....
... Extraordinarily a British television news feature on the secretive De Beers diamond manufacturing factory on the Isle of Man stated that the diamonds made there by the above method are too pure for jewels' for it is impurities that give diamonds their beauty.' Jewellers would be astonished to hear this. They sell pure flawless diamonds for astronomical prices as more beautiful. Clearly this put another De Beers myth into jeopardy. It seems that a new myth had to be invented to explain why flawless diamonds synthesised in a De Beers plant were not suitable to be publicly sold as expensive gems.
... De Beers is growing diamonds now in a multi-million dollar laboratory with over 500 staff in South Africa. A 38.4 carat yellow diamond ...
A diamond merchant called Joseph Schlussel in his office on Fifth Avenue in New York showed me diamonds synthesised by Sumitomo that he had cut as gems. They were dazzling and of fine rare colours. He reported in his trade newsletter Diamond Registry' that None of the experts who were shown them could identify the difference between the synthetic product and the natural stones of the same size ... the experts included cutters, importers, gemologists and even some De Beers executives.' No wonder, they were real diamonds, though human made.
... ... an advertisement in 1988 in a Phoenix, Arizona, newspaper, the Sun City Daily News, exhorting customers to: turn the ashes of your beloved into a diamond'! It seemed we can reduce a dead husband or wife to an ornament in order to reproduce the sparkle in their eyes. ..
...Then there are the hundreds of gem diamonds that are passed through certain licensed atomic reactors in the US. The radiation enhances their colour and is scarcely detectable - except with a Geiger counter! ...Health warnings are now supposed to be issued...