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How diamonds are made

diamond.jaydip.me

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Re: How diamonds are made

#51

Post by markvdb »

ramesh31 wrote: post #24
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #3

Well, that goes for some diamonds. There's another kind that are made by man. In recent years -- over the past four or five years -- there has been an explosion in synthetic diamond production, largely driven by factories in China and India. There are a lot of those factories (spurred by the relatively easy availability of the necessary production-line equipment) and they're all in cutthroat competition with each oth…

>"You can get huge, very high-quality diamonds now for a fraction of what they used to cost. Like 95% off. It's crazy." The thing is though, what's the point? Unless you're trying to actually pass your diamond as real, there's literally no difference between that $1500 lab grown gem and a $5 piece of costume jewelry. No one but a jewler will ever tell the difference, so why pay anything at all? With real diamonds tod…

> Grandma's heirloom Tiffany engagement ring will have meaning in the way that a lab grown no name ring ordered online will not, even if they are completely indistinguishable.

Not sure how to parse that. Perhaps it's a cultural thing? This seems to be conflating value, meaning and worth in a confusing-to-me way.

- "Grandma's heirloom" would have sentimental value, regardless of brand name, production process or monetary value. Grandma's candy box or her modest music box would have similar sentimental value. Depending on what this grandmother meant to you as a person, this could be positive or negative sentimental value.

-"Tiffany's" versus "no name, ordered online" might for equal quality jewelry make for a slight higher resale value. All other things being equal, that is.

- Lab grown versus mined could make a slight difference in resale value. This is very often very much overestimated because of how the diamond retail market works.

- Lab grown versus mined really depends when it comes to emotional value.

  - For example, if someone were to offer my wife or me a mined diamond with no history, we'd assign it negative emotional value because of the suffering attached. Unless it were to have come from a historical source with no money having changed hands, not even in the second hand trade. In which case no extra harm would have been done even by trading in the secondary market.

  - Others might attach positive emotional value to the rarity of the mined diamond.

  - Some sociopaths, psychopaths or sadists no doubt attach positive emotional value to the knowledge people had to suffer for the ring on their finger.

Re: How diamonds are made

#52

Post by J37T3R »

jdsane wrote: post #35
cwillu wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Playful yes, but it is anything but accessible.

hello, I'm the author of article. I've tried my best to use accessibility patterns. If there's anything that i can improve lmk :)

For my two cents, the jiggly images are distracting from the text and the site makes my (admittedly somewhat old) phone stutter when scrolling. Overall it feels like you tried doing too much with it when simpler would have been better.

Re: How diamonds are made

#53

Post by ethbr1 »

etrautmann wrote: post #48
blueone wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most of diamond purchases are for engagement rings. Nobody wants to appear cheap. The expense and rarity is the point. I relate to this. I wasn’t born rich and grew up poor. My parents started a business when I was in my teens, so I worked two jobs, and technically still do because I help them out. My parents instilled a work ethic in me that’s helped me get to where I am in life. When it came time for me to buy an…

That can be the right call (and is the one I would make) but for situations like this, it may be as much about how you think about something yourself rather than how others view it. If spending more makes it mean something different to you, then that can be a primary function. That being said, blood diamonds are a huge problem, DeBeers is a cartel, and we’d be better off investing our money in other ways that serve a…

I'd counterpoint that if one can't make oneself feel good through something other than lighting cash on fire... one isn't thinking hard enough.

In the parent's example, I'd be surprised if anyone can't find another good or activity to also purchase for $25,000 that isn't meaningful.

And you still have a physically identical diamond.

Re: How diamonds are made

#54

Post by pibaker »

ramesh31 wrote: post #24
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #3

Well, that goes for some diamonds. There's another kind that are made by man. In recent years -- over the past four or five years -- there has been an explosion in synthetic diamond production, largely driven by factories in China and India. There are a lot of those factories (spurred by the relatively easy availability of the necessary production-line equipment) and they're all in cutthroat competition with each oth…

>"You can get huge, very high-quality diamonds now for a fraction of what they used to cost. Like 95% off. It's crazy." The thing is though, what's the point? Unless you're trying to actually pass your diamond as real, there's literally no difference between that $1500 lab grown gem and a $5 piece of costume jewelry. No one but a jewler will ever tell the difference, so why pay anything at all? With real diamonds tod…

> there's literally no difference between that $1500 lab grown gem and a $5 piece of costume jewelry.

Sorry but this is just not true. Diamond has a very high refractive index compared to most materials. Even a total amateur will quickly notice how much more shiny a diamond is compared to a cheap piece of glass or plastic.

Re: How diamonds are made

#55

Post by asdfasvea »

blueone wrote: post #47
raz32dust wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's marketing plus perception of how expensive it is. Most of diamond purchases are for engagement rings. Nobody wants to appear cheap. The expense and rarity is the point.

> Most of diamond purchases are for engagement rings. Nobody wants to appear cheap. The expense and rarity is the point. I relate to this. I wasn’t born rich and grew up poor. My parents started a business when I was in my teens, so I worked two jobs, and technically still do because I help them out. My parents instilled a work ethic in me that’s helped me get to where I am in life. When it came time for me to buy an…

>>>Spending 18x to 20x more on something that looks exactly the same and serves the same purpose just wasn’t logical to me.

That's up there with people who brag about only smoking when they drink and vegetarians for moral reasons who eat fish.

You framed a feelings based, adherence to tradition, no basis of actual functionality as a rational, logical decision, just because there was a worse decision to be made.

Re: How diamonds are made

#56

Post by cwillu »

jdsane wrote: post #35
cwillu wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Playful yes, but it is anything but accessible.

hello, I'm the author of article. I've tried my best to use accessibility patterns. If there's anything that i can improve lmk :)

I affirm what the other comment says, but I additionally want to note that whatever you're doing to defeat reader-mode should be avoided: it's there for a reason!

Additional notable bug: scrolling around simply breaks the transitions, leaving me scrolling around vast completely blank vertical sections until I get back to the very bottom, and then the very top.

Re: How diamonds are made

#57

Post by Terr_ »

ridgeguy wrote: post #40
cassepipe wrote: post #33

> From here, there are two rounds of sorting: gem quality and industrial grade. Most of mined diamonds never become jewellery. They go to cutting tools, drill bits, and grinding equipment. For industrial use synthetic diamond is actually quite cheap now. The vast majority of industrial diamonds used today are synthetic and they've been affordable since the 1950s (?). Industrial-grade synthetic diamond grit or powder…

Diamond grit for polishing and grinding is now a cheap commodity. In 10,000 ct. lots, I pay from 5¢/ct. to 30¢/ct. depending on specific grit properties. I haven't searched for it, but diamond sandpaper should be a thing at these prices.

> diamond sandpaper should be a thing

I wonder, do diamond abrasives create any unusual safety/environmental issues when used around the house?

I can't imagine it being any more chemically-objectionable than tungsten carbide, but the structure and behavior of dusts could be different, etc.

The answer is probably that other things are still cheaper.

Re: How diamonds are made

#58

Post by ripe »

One more fact that might be interesting about natural diamonds: not all of them are extracted by digging mines; the oldest way of extracting diamonds is by sifting through alluvial deposits.

This method originated centuries ago in India. In fact, until the 18th century, this was the only known method. The most famous origin of alluvial diamonds is the Godavari-Krishna river delta in the old Golconda Sultanate. This particular site was exhausted about 200 years ago, making Golconda diamonds especially precious now.

Re: How diamonds are made

#60

Post by etrautmann »

ethbr1 wrote: post #53
etrautmann wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That can be the right call (and is the one I would make) but for situations like this, it may be as much about how you think about something yourself rather than how others view it. If spending more makes it mean something different to you, then that can be a primary function. That being said, blood diamonds are a huge problem, DeBeers is a cartel, and we’d be better off investing our money in other ways that serve a…

I'd counterpoint that if one can't make oneself feel good through something other than lighting cash on fire... one isn't thinking hard enough. In the parent's example, I'd be surprised if anyone can't find another good or activity to also purchase for $25,000 that isn't meaningful. And you still have a physically identical diamond.

Yes I agree. My point was more generally that the discussion around whether other people can tell ignores how one feels themself. I don’t often hear that point made, that you can’t lie to yourself IF it’s important to you that it’s natural or whatever. It’s way easier to actually not care or prefer lab grown and then move forward feeling great.
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