How to Check Diamond quality at Home (DIY)

Diamonds, like other precious metals, are expensive and rare. That makes investing in them a heavy and emotional purchase that may come with various questions. The authenticity of the diamonds is one of the biggest questions people ask before putting their money in them. It helps to know how to check if diamonds are genuine or not. This article will discuss some simple DIY tests that you can do all by yourself before you shop for diamonds.

Let’s get started.

7 Simple DIY Tests for Diamonds

Various tests can help you verify the authenticity of diamonds at home. You do not need any technical knowledge or help to test diamonds with the methods we’ll share in this article. So, here are the various ways to do it:

1.    Using Fog

The fog test is straightforward and all you need is the stone you are suspecting is diamond. You can do it even though you have no experience with diamonds and without needing any tools.

Here’s how to go about it.

• Hold the stone and place it in front of your mouth
• Exhale on it to fog it like people do when they want to clean their glasses
• Watch if the surface of the stone does fog or not.

If it fogs, it is something else or simply a fake diamond. Diamonds lack good heat retention capabilities, so they won’t fog when hit with your warm breath.

2.    Using a Loupe

Now, this technique requires equipment – a loupe. Thankfully, it’s a simple and small magnifying device that you can purchase online. You can use this device to magnify visible imperfections as jewelers and watchmakers do. A loupe helps them check the class and clarity of diamonds. Most real diamonds have imperfections that you can see if you look through a loupe. You can look for inclusions and signs of slight color changes. You can conclude that what you have is diamond if it has flaws and colors. There’re rare diamonds that do not have these imperfections, so you can use other tests to verify. This means you should not use the loupe method to make a final determination unless you see internal flaws and imperfections.

3.    The Water Test

This is also among the easiest methods you can employ when checking diamonds. You also do not need equipment for it, only a glass of water and the stone you’d like to check.

Go ahead and:

• Fill the glass with water.
• Drop the diamond inside the water

Genuine diamonds are dense, making them sink when dropped in a glass of water; therefore, consider it fake if it floats.

4.    Using a Black Light

You can do this test at any time as long as you have a blacklight and are in a dark room. Turn off every light in the room, then hold the stone in front of the blacklight. The aim is to check if it fluoresces, which will help you differentiate between a real and fake diamond. A real diamond will glow blue under the blacklight, and some may also glow yellow. Any other color apart from blue and yellow could mean that you have fake diamonds in your hands. If there’s no reaction or visible color, it could be real or fake, so you can conduct other tests to be sure.

5.    Newspaper/Dot Test

This test is worth considering if you have loose gems and not set ones. All you need is a piece of paper or a newspaper with a small dot or letter drawn on it. Place the stone on the dot or letter and check if you can still see what you drew in its correct shape. If you can still see the dot or letter clearly, then what you have is most likely not a diamond. One outstanding property of diamonds is that they bend light so intensely. This should make it almost impossible to see any writing correctly. You may see nothing at all if the dot is too small.

6.    The Sparkle Test

You won’t need any equipment for this test, but it requires a bit of experience with diamonds. The process requires you to place the gem under a source of light. Then, you need to closely examine how it sparkles when you expose it to bright light. Be keen on the light and dark areas of the diamond when doing this test. Genuine diamonds display a strong contrast of these areas, making it possible to identify them. However, this may be a difficult test for the inexperienced, so you might find other tests easier if you are a beginner.

7.    Weighing and Measuring

It would be best to have a high accuracy gem scale and calipers for this test. Some people also use rulers, but you cannot be sure it’ll be accurate. To do this, start by measuring the stone across its widest point. Then place it on the scale to check weight, then use a standard chart to compare them. Both the width and weight of your gem should match those on the standard chart. This is unless your stone isn’t cut properly. If the measurements match, then it is a most likely genuine diamond. If it doesn’t, primarily if you used a ruler to take measurements, then use another test.

Conclusion

Those are the diamond tests you can carry at home or anywhere you bump into this precious metal, all by yourself. However, when learning about this, remember that you may come across tests that may be destructive. You should be able to differentiate between the good and bad methods.

In short, you no longer need to be or hire a gemologist to test diamonds. The insights shared in this article should make testing diamonds a seamless task. You can try more than one method to be certain before you put your money into the diamonds. Implementing these tips will save you from shady retailers out there looking to take advantage of unsuspecting investors looking to put their money in diamonds. It will make investing safer. Also, it will help you get the desired returns on your investment.