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