Russian Technology artificial diamonds in Florida

supposedly, these are indistinguishable from natural diamonds with
current technology

Soon We’ll All be Decked in Diamonds

An ex-Army officer in Florida is using secret Soviet
technology to create fake diamonds that are indistinguishable
from “real” ones. Soon we’ll all be able to afford to wear
masses of thembut when it’s no longer a status symbol, will we
still want to?

Joshua Davis writes in Wired Magazine about Carter Clarke, who
runs Gemesis in Sarasota, Florida, where he grows diamonds in
a warehouse using Russian-designed machines. Diamond dealer
Aron Weingarten of Antwerp, Belgium says, “Unless they can be
detected, these stones will bankrupt the industry.”

In reaction, De Beers has set up what it calls the Gem
Defensive Program to warn jewelers that the fakes are on the
market. The problem is, there’s no way to tell the “fakes”
from “real” diamonds. Clarke says, “Right now, we only
threaten the way De Beers wants the consumer to think of a
diamond. But imagine what happens when we fill this warehouse
and then the one next door. Then I’ll have myself a proper
diamond mine.”

Clarke discovered diamond-making technology during a 1995 trip
to Moscow, when he met Yuriy Semenov, who was in charge of
selling Soviet-era military research to Western investors. He
asked Clarke, “How would you like to grow diamonds?”

He showed Clarke an 8,000-pound machine that used hydraulics
and electricity to produce enough pressure and heat to
recreate conditions 100 miles below Earth’s surface, where
diamonds form naturally. If you put a diamond sliver in the
machine and inject carbon (the raw material of diamonds), a
larger diamond will grow around the sliver. General Electric
built a diamond-making machine in 1954, but it took so much
electrical energy that the resulting diamonds were more
expensive than mined stones.

Clarke brought a machine back to Florida with him, but no one
in the U.S. knew how to run it, so he imported a crew of
Russians as well. When it comes to Florida, Nickolay Patrin,
says, “I felt myself all the time in a sauna.” But the machine
still wasn’t working right, so Clarke hired Iranian crystal
expert Reza Abbaschian, who installed a computer control
system.

When Clarke took some of his manufactured diamonds to a gem
show in London, De Beers was tipped off and one of their
executives, James Evans Lombe, met him there. “When I told him
that we planned to set up a factory to mass- produce these, he
turned white,” Clarke says. “They knew about the technology,
but they thought it would stay in Russia and that nobody would
get it working right. By the end of the conversation, his
hands were shaking.”

Since there’s no way to tell the difference, De Beers
pressured the Federal Trade Commission to force Gemesis to
label its stones synthetic. Clarke decided to call them
“cultured,” as in cultured pearls. He’s started out making
yellow diamonds, which are extremely rare and expensive, and
charges 10 to 50% less for them.

Gemesis has a marketing campaign that says their synthetics
are superior to natural diamonds. “If you give a woman a
choice between a 2-carat stone and a 1-carat stone and
everything else is the same, including the price, what’s she
gonna choose?” Clarke says. “Does she care if it’s synthetic
or not? Is anybody at a party going to walk up to her and ask,
‘Is that synthetic?’ There’s no way in hell. So I’ll bite your
ass if she chooses the smaller one.”

A diamond has always symbolized love, but is it possible to
love someone who is worshipped by the public? And what’s he
REALLY like? Learn about Amy Wallace’s secret affair with
Carlos Castaneda on this week’s Dreamland.

Jeanne
http://www.jeannius.com
http://www.silverthreadsfiligree.com

Gemesis has been doing this for quite sometime now, but this does
(once again) bring up the argument about synthetics vs ‘real’ stones.
I think we’re going to be picking on the dead horse again soon.

My opinion is it comes down to terminology… I used the word 'real’
above and that is the problem word… EVERYTHING is real… some stuff
is NATURAL… but it’s ALL real… is there a
chemical/optical/physical difference between the synthetic and it’s
natural counterparts? If there isn’t that in MY opinion you’re
holding a REAL piece of. The customers determine the value of
synthetics. I happen to like cutting them since you can get nice,
big, flawless gemstones with great properties (colors, color change,
high RI, etc) that is virtually impossible or would be unaffordable
to the average consumer.

Just my.02.

Craig

I talked to Solaura, one of the distributors for the Gemesis
synthetic diamonds. They said that only the yellow diamonds are still
available, and those have an orange tint. Other Gemesis colors, long
promised, have been pretty poor so far.

I toured the Gemisis plant when it was here in Gainesville. Most of
them are yellow. They won’t be growing warehouses of them. It is a
slow process. And they are very expensive. Not as much of a threat
as you would think.

FYI: From abstract of Gems & Gemology article in 2002:

Gemesis Laboratory-Created Diamonds
James E. Shigley, Reza Abbaschian, and Carter Clarke

Gemesis (large)High-quality yellow, orange-yellow, and yellow-orange
laboratory-created type Ib diamond crystals up to 3.5 ct are being
produced commercially by the Gemesis Corp. of Sarasota, Florida. In
some samples, color zoning (yellow and narrower colorless zones) and
a weak UV fluorescence pattern (a small green cross-shaped zone
combined with an overall weak orange luminescence) provide means of
identification; when present, metallic inclusions also indicate
laboratory growth. Some samples lack these diagnostic visual
features, but all of these Gemesis synthetic diamonds can be
identified by advanced instrumentation such as the De Beers
DiamondView luminescence imaging system and EDXRF chemical analysis.

Gerry Davies
Managing Editor
MJSA Journal

This article is filled with the usual hullabaloo over nothing. First
of all there is equipment available to determine synthetic/natural
origin. Secondly, this guy in Florida has been trying hard to market
his product for quite awhile and I have yet to see one or talk to a
single person who owns one, or even wants to own one. After the guy
is done filling his two warehouses full of synthetic diamonds the
only thing that will happen is that his own product will be worth a
whole lot less than it is now. Actually there is a massive amount of
misin this article. As always, you should take everything
you read with a grain of salt.

Daniel R. Spirer, G.G.
Daniel R. Spirer Jewelers, LLC
1780 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02140
617-234-4392

This article is filled with the usual hullabaloo over nothing.
First of all there is equipment available to determine
synthetic/natural origin. 

In a saturated market, how will the addition of synthetics affect
it? I suspect that a lot of half carat natural stones will take a
back seat to a full carat synthetic of equal quality. What do you
think?

Secondly, this guy in Florida has been trying hard to market his
product for quite awhile and I have yet to see one or talk to a
single person who owns one, or even wants to own one. 

I have a friend that has sold quite a few. I have set quite a few.
He has sold major goods for over thirty years in the Washington, DC
area and I far from see him giving up the synthetics anytime soon.

After the guy is done filling his two warehouses full of synthetic
diamonds the only thing that will happen is that his own product
will be worth a whole lot less than it is now. Actually there is a
massive amount of misin this article. As always, you
should take everything you read with a grain of salt. 

Bruce D. Holmgrain
JA Certified Master Benchjeweler

I have been practicing goldsmithing since 1972 and I have G.G. from
GIA and I like synthetic diamonds.

My only objection is that they are still too expensive. I also have
done a lot of work with CZs.

It is beautiful stone in many way superior to diamond. We all been
programmed by De Beers not to think that way, but it is time to
recognize that all that nonsense of “Diamonds are Forever” or
"Diamonds are Good Investment" is a marketing clap-trap. To me,
design and workmanship are much more important than whether the
diamond is “natural” or “lab-grown”.

I understand that merchants, I intentionally do call them jewellers,
who are sitting on huge inventories of De Beers diamonds are trying
to convince us that lab-grown is somehow inferior, but so were the
buggy whip makers commenting about Ford model T, and we know what
happened to them. Lab-grown diamonds are here to stay. I am not
familiar with the “guy in Florida”, but to those who are interested I
would refer to the Tairus company for the more info about lab-grown
gems.

About distinguishing between natural and lab-grown diamonds. While
theoretically it is still possible, it is becoming impractical and
with the advance in manufacturing techniques very soon would be
almost impossible. Even, when you submit diamond to the lab and lab
says it is natural, it is only an opinion and the diamond can still
prove to be lab-grown if examined more carefully, with more advanced
equipment. Just read the disclosures on the lab reports.

So the question becomes, how important the distinction can be if
even experts having difficult time telling it apart. No question
diamond merchants have a problem, but for a practicing jeweler /
goldsmith it should not make any difference. Victorian Jewellery was
made using gold-backed silver and glass imitations of the gems, but
because craftsmanship was superlative, it is still treasured by many.

Once I explain to my customers that difference, that can only be
told with gemological microscope, would cost them thousands of
dollars, majority chooses lab-grown stones, and if someone have money
to burn, I can accommodate them as well.