So the first step when we start to produce created emeralds we need to prepare the source material
and we need to prepare the autoclave. So we take the source material from different origins like
Russia, Brazil, Colombia, Pakistan, depending on what color of the emerald we want to get.
We make the source material into smaller pieces as it may come in huge rocks and we cannot put
the huge rocks in autoclave so we need to make the pieces smaller. There are two types of man-made
materials; one is that we called "synthetic" made total of chemistry, so there is not any natural
source material in that, and there is another type which we call "lab grown" or "created" material.
Hydrothermal emerald is one of them. For this one, we use a recrystallization process, meaning that
we need to take a natural gem and just regrow it again in the furnace, in an autoclave.
So once the natural stone is prepared, meaning that it's sliced in smaller pieces, once we saw
the natural material, we need to grow the seed out of it. So once we've prepared the seed,
we need to attach it to the wire to put it inside the autoclave. So once everything is prepared, we
put the source material inside the autoclave. Then we put a special solution to create an environment
for growing. Then we put a seed inside and then we just seal it. When the autoclave is full we
start to heat it and the natural emerald starts to dissolve slowly step by step and it goes up,
mixes with solution, and starts to stick to the seeds that you put inside.
Slowly the crystal starts to grow. There are 19 autoclaves in each furnace and there are
only two seeds inside each autoclave. We get only two crystals from each autoclave. So once
the furnace is full with autoclaves, we put 19 of them in each furnace, it takes around one
month to grow a perfect hydrothermal crystal. So it's a long time. We just open the autoclave. Now
it's not a seed anymore, it's a full grown crystal. We need to slice the seed out. So
we have two slabs of a full crystal that then we use for cutting we sell as rough anything.
There is always a chance that something will go wrong because we cannot look inside the autoclave,
we even cannot look inside the furnace to check how it goes. You can just try to make the perfect
environment so everything goes fine. There is still some chance of mistake. Everything is
scheduled so we know when to open the furnace. We may get some mistakes so it's like a lottery
every time. Because sometimes the crystal is too thin, sometimes it's not full grown,
sometimes we still have some natural emerald on the bottom of the autoclave so it's not dissolved
totally. If something went wrong and the crystal didn't grow fully for example,
we just sort it to lower grades. We don't put it to the cycle again.
If we have some natural source material on bottom of the autoclave we can use it again.
We are producing two types of emeralds Colombian and Zambian color. When we are looking at the
color we can see that the saturation of both materials is very strong but the tone is
different. So Colombian is lighter and Zambian is darker. So we prefer to use Colombian material for
bigger sizes of stones, up to 50-60 carats weight. As you can see here, the size of Colombian slab
is much bigger than the size of Zambian slab. At the factory we just visited, the autoclaves
are not big enough to grow a huge crystal. At our other factories where we grow Colombian material,
the autoclaves are bigger so we can grow bigger material. Also Zambian material gets too dark
when it's too thick so we don't produce too much big pieces. The hydrothermal process is the only
process that allows us to make natural looking inclusions. In Zambian material you can see only
tiny cracks, sometimes bigger cracks, while in Colombian material you can see feathers,
fingerprints, and two face inclusions. Here we can see an unsliced Zambian crystal.
You can see the seed and the wires on which the crystal was hanging in autoclave. Normally at
the factory they slice the seed out so we can get two slabs. If they don't cut the seed out when,
you facet the stone you can see the seed as a line which you would never find in a natural gem.
Here you can see the Zambian material, when it's faceted. It's the top color for natural Zambian
material. Highly saturated with a slightly dark tone. Free of inclusions. Visually you cannot see
any difference between the natural Zambian emerald and the hydrothermal one. For the Colombian
material we can see really high saturation, medium tone, not as dark as the Zambian one.
And as we divide this material into several grades, we can get really clean stones and at the
same time more natural looking included material. Now we've seen the entire process of creating a
hydrothermal emerald. In the next video we'll see how we go from the rough slab to a faceted stone.