hi I'm Steve Moriarty from Moriarty's Gem Art, we're jeweler on square in Crown
Point Indiana and we also represent ourselves online as TanzaniteJewelryDesigns.com
Today we're here to give you some assistance in how to identify
tanzanite tanzanite here is natural gem and here is the crystal of tanzanite and
the difficulty in separating these visually is a problem but with a little
bit of equipment you can make separation the problem is that there are several
gems that kind of duplicate the color and somewhat the appearance of tanzanite
many tanzanite you can visually look at it and you know it's tanzanite but
sometimes in the medium and lighter colors it becomes difficult the gems
that we have to deal with that are imitations for the stone that I say
imitation because there is no synthetic for tanzanite synthetic lichen synthetic
sapphire synthetic rubies emeralds if you grind them up they are exactly the
same man-made one major made the other so a synthetic is very difficult to
separate but we don't have to deal with that in tanzanite no synthetic only
imitations and imitations can be separated by optical equipment that we
have here the equipment that you can use well the imitations that our problem
would include glass spinel nutriyum aluminum garnet which is
yeah synthetic sapphire synthetic forsterite is probably the biggest issue
in identifying because its characteristics are a little closer to
Pam tonight and if you look is better and it's the most commonly used
imitation for tanzanite and then we have a natural gem called iolite which
somewhat has the appearance of tanzanite and compete and can confuse you so our
first piece of equipment would be the $10 loop this is a Hastings triplet this
particular loop might run you $40 but you can buy a good 10 power loop around
10 bucks so in identifying tanzanite this only
really has one purpose and that will separate for forsterite, which is
the most commonly used imitation of tanzanite and the way you do that is the
for strike has a characteristic of being strongly birefringence meaning that it
really separates light into two rays pretty strongly so as you take your
sample and you look through the crown facets which is this is the table and
the column facets are out to the side of the table
you look through the table to the facets on the back of the cell and as you're
looking through it you can see the lines that the facets make and in tanzanite
those lines are go curves one straight line but in four straight what happens
is because of the strong separation you will actually see two lines close
together mirror images of each other it's just every facet light will have
two instead of one there's only truly one there but
when when forsterite bends the light as much as it does you actually see two so
that is one separation for four stripe not much good on the other imitations
but the temp our loop is of course good for many things that you're going to use
if you're buying gems just for identifying inclusion seeing how the
quality of the Polish is so it's a good piece of equipment to have and very
inexpensive now the next piece of equipment can be expensive this is a
refractometer this is a jewelers go-to device it will separate 90% of every cam
that we get the ones that are the biggest problems would be synthetics a
synthetic is the same as the natural gem only man made it natural gems were found
in nature but they are duplicates of each other
so what this in turn will lead will be the same for a synthetic as it is for
the natural gem so it doesn't help for that
but with tanzanite we're not dealing with that issue we only have imitations
that deal with and what this will read will be different for every imitation
that you could constantly deal with so how this works is you need a drop of
refractive index fluid you put the gem on the HemisFair carefully because the
scratches easily close it up turn your light on and you look through here and
you'll see a scale on there and it'll read out a number and
that number is you look on the side of this instrument every gem as a different
number so you can pretty much identify all the imitations of tanzanite using
this piece of equipment generally the problem is that it's an expensive piece
of equipment this setup is over 1,500 dollars to buy it but recently I found
this instrument which in the a de de advanced optics refractometer and I take
it with me overseas whenever I go because it is a relatively accurate
refractometer that you can buy for under $100 so it is something that all of us
cannot even if you're into dealing with gems it's something you should own the
refractometer will pretty much separate all of these gems but a little
difficulty with with any on the list but the next piece of equipment will also
separate all the tanzanite for you and this is the tanzanite filter produced by
dr. Hanuman Hanuman Gemological instruments and another piece of
equipment that's inexpensive this is under $40 delivered to you from Amazon
and so this piece of equipment the loop and the refractometer which will
identify most things that you could want including tanzanites and their
imitations you're dealing with less than one hundred and fifty dollars for all of
it so this tanzanite filters is a very useful device not only does it give you
the tanzanite filter it also gives you a dicroscope - my dichroscope cost 80 bucks
for 40 bucks you get the tanzanite filter and you get a dichroscope with
it what a deal so this side of it this film is actually works as a dichroscope
and here is your tanzanite filter so the dichroscope will be helpful
with the singly refractive gems which would include glass spinel and the YAG
because when you look through these where dichroic gems will show two colors
and in case of tanzanite can be three colors a singular refractive gem like
the glass and spinel and the YAG will only show one color so you can
automatically read those out from being tanzanite just by using this dichroscope
the other half of the filter is the tanzanite color so when you look through
the filter what you're going to see is these colors for the different
imitations and it will separate most of the imitations especially when you
combine it with the dichroscope so just this filter is very useful and
separating almost any of the imitations that you could use so you can see there
are several ways of identifying it and a couple of the piece of equipment
including the tanzanite filter and refractometer will separate all the
issues you're going to have with whether you have a natural tanzanite or a fake
one thing on the refractometer is that mounted jewelry sometimes can be done
but sometimes it's a problem because you can't get it to lay flat on
the instrument and it does take a very flat facet to show reading so a poorly
cut stone may also be an issue with a refractometer so from here we're going
to show you some of the things that the duiker scope does in this Hanneman
filter just a real handy device that's going to be useful in other gems you may
buy also a real good quality instrument I take this with me when I travel all
the time because it's a small instrument that can go anywhere and can identify
many many stones so this is what the dichroscope does for you in all
dichroic gems the singly refractive gems will show one color but this is just a
very useful tool that anybody into jams should own the three pieces of equipment
that have recommended to identify tanzanite whether natural or fake cost
you a hundred and fifty dollars and well worth owning to help you in all your
purchases of gems or take that money and come shop with us at TanzaniteJewelryDesigns.com