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Welcome to the Gilt Trips podcast. I'm your host, Kendra Lockhart. As a goldsmith and

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gemologist, I'll be speaking 24 carat on all things jewelry, metals, and gems. Join

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me plus a few friends to demystify both materials and designs as your private jeweler. Let's

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tune in on these topics and get golden. The master, Gordon Ramsay, has said that a chef

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is only as good as their knives. I say that line of thinking is much more truthful for

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a gemologist and the equipment at hand. A gemologist is someone who has to have two

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minds, one of a librarian and the other around forensics, because gemology is a branch of

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mineralogy that trains and certifies us. We become people who identify and grade precious

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gems and jewels. What tests and tools help identify jewels? Why does it matter to know

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what category gems are in? We'll answer that in today's episode. Chapter timestamps are

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in the show notes. I have two jobs currently. One is in an office where I have a mini lab

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and one is offsite where I have a field kit. So I'm going to break it down into which can

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be portable devices and which have to stay put in the office. The first is a loop, which

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is a small, simple lens-based magnification device used to see details. Today's standard

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is a 10 power loop, but I often use 45 power when I need to find inscribed serial numbers

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on lab-grown diamonds. The former is required to view and assess a diamond's clarity so

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that you can assign it a grade. That just needs a 10 power. Now I've got colleagues who have

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treated themselves to a loop with a case and a handle made out of yellow gold and very

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elaborately engraved. There's a romance to be jeweling the piece that you need to use

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to look at expensive gems, but I'm also a bit of a minimalist and I like my equipment

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straightforward, so to each their own. Next are the gauges. A leveraged gauge or a digital

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gauge. They'll be used for precise measuring of either diamonds, for example, or a whole

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piece, metal thicknesses. A leveraged gauge or the digital gauge are both hand-held tools

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that make precise measurements of an object's length, width, depth, or thickness. They are

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easy to use and read and can display measurements in both metric and imperial units. The leveraged

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gauge has a manual dial with markers, kind of like a watch. The digital version computes

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the number for you. Technology does make it easier and more user-friendly when you don't

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have to be the human calculator if the device is going to do that work. In either case,

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the dial is held in the palm of the hand and your thumb operates the slider so that you

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can spring it open and insert the gem or ring or component you want to measure. The two

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walls spring closed on your piece and the gauge will read the difference into a number

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for you. Digital calipers are a lot like the gauges except the sliders integrated into

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a ruler. I can get readings down to 1,000th of a millimeter. I can switch the display

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into inches and even lock the calipers in place with a rotating knob. This helps me

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with much larger items like measuring a watch case, where the gauges would get maxed out

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since they're designed for smaller items. In my field kit, I also have tweezers and

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grips. If the gem is loose, your fingers are going to be too clunky or big, especially

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if the jewel is tiny. You will need your metal tweezers, which are held between the thumb

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and fingers, to grab and manipulate the gem. I use tweezers mostly in combination with

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my loop so that the item is steady and not getting all finger printed up. If it's a

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larger stone, it also helps me hold and lock while handing to a client to view. This makes

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combining with a loop, onsite, offsite, or in meeting very simple.

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An alternative to tweezers is the gem grip. It's like a ballpoint pen, but when you push

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the bottom, four retractable prongs come out and hold a gem from its table to cue it, or

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vertically and not from either its length or width. Again, this comes in extremely useful

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to capture a loose stone and be able to pass it from gemologist to client and then back

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to us. And now, the elements in what my office has that constitute a mini lab. First is going

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to be the microscope. This is a complex instrument that helps to uncover many traits of gems

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and jewels that you will be determining. Words like dark field, bright field, and diffused

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are going to refer to the type of lighting needed to find identifying inclusions, or

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striay, or color zoning. You may hear refracted light, which will expose surface issues, pinpoint

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lighting, and that can be achieved with opening the baffle and closing down the iris. Oblique

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lighting will help you see horizontal pinpoint crystals, bubbles, or flux inclusions. If

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it sounds like a heavy lifter of your equipment options, it's because it is.

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The refractometer. One test to determine the gem's identity is to measure the refraction

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of light with the gem. Essentially, when light passes from one substance to another, it bends.

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Blue light bends more than red light. How much the light bends will vary depending on the

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gem's mineral composition. Every material has a critical angle, meaning, at a certain

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point, light is reflected back internally. This can be measured and thus used to determine

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the gem's identity. Typically, that is found with the refractometer. I have a liquid that

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I put between the light source lens and the facet of the gem before I look through a viewfinder.

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The number I find correlates to refractive indexes. If I get a 1.76 to 1.77, I am working

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with ruby or sapphire and not glass. A polariscope. This is a critical tool used to determine

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how much light is bending through the gem. With a polarizing filter and a light source,

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this device will help a gemologist determine if one ray of light is returning, called singly

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refractive like a diamond, or if I am getting two rays exiting the material, making it doubly

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refractive like moistenite. The polarizing filter works by blocking out the light except

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in a single direction. A diacroscope is like a little tiny spyglass that works with the

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doubly refractive material and lets the gemologist know if more than two colors will show. When

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you look through a lens, it shows two side-by-side square windows in the view. The tool is made

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up of internal prisms plus calcite, a material that also bends light. So, single ray, or

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single refraction colors stay the same. Two ray, or double refraction, you will get two

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different colors. But what do you do when there is more? That word is called pleochroic,

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meaning multicolor, and material like tansonite has this trait. You will rotate on all the

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axes, twirl 90 degrees, the colors will switch frames. This helps you determine the difference

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between a tourmaline, which is diacroic, or shows two colors through this instrument,

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and aylite, which is pleochroic, like tansonite. It also helps diagnose natural versus synthetic

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ruby because the colors that come back to the eye are completely different. A spectroscope

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uses a similar principle to how a prism works to separate white light into its component

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colors. A gemological spectroscope is employed to analyze the selective absorption of light

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in the gem material. Coloring agents show bands in the spectroscope and indicate which

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element is responsible for the gem's color. This instrument is also like a tiny little

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spyglass held up to the eye and directed towards a light source with the gem in front of its

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end. You will see a visible spectrum, like a section of a rainbow, with absorption lines.

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These dark lines correlate to the chemical makeup. It will form a pattern that will help

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you match it up to known images of identified gems. I like to say it creates a quote unquote

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barcode that we can look up in a book with images and find its match.

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The Chelsea color filter is an important lens that allows me to identify certain green, red,

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and blue stones. Mainly it assists us when we are detecting dyes in certain gems, like

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dyed green and blue calcidine. Fluorescence is when a gem starts glowing under ultraviolet

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lighting. Phosphorescence is when a gem stays glowing after removing its exposure to ultraviolet

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lighting. The equipment for using UV can either come as a flashlight, which I can use in the

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field, or a light box that we have at our office or mini labs. The most important use

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of UV is diagnosing heat treatments on rubies and sapphires, or certain types of filler

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and emeralds. And in the world of jewels, the big three, those gems, mean thousands

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of dollars difference in natural versus enhanced colors, so this is critical equipment.

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The GIA ID 100. What do we need when it comes time to discern earth diamonds from lab grown

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diamonds? We need this tool. Using spectroscopic technology plus GIA's decades of diamond and

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gemstone identification research, their machine can distinguish natural diamonds from laboratory

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grown, which show their methods, whether they're high pressure, high or carbon vapor deposit,

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and thus recognizing the diamond source material as well as certain simulants. The Duo Tester

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is what I use most out of all of my equipment. If I need to get varieties and gem species,

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this combines thermal conductivity and reflectivity indexes. A thermal current goes through a pen,

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like a wand, and then shows up on a gauge. It can separate things like quartz material,

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limoline, glass, spinel, ruby, sapphire, and diamond. The Gem Identification Manual. This

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is the bible of gems, minerals, synthetics, composites, you name it. It rolls all the tests

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that I've been outlining into how to confidently make the call. When you've done all your

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paces on a gem, and some are diagnostic with certainty, and some are inconclusive, taking

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all of your data and cracking open the book to cross check your results into, hey, this

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gem can only be XYZ. It's pretty satisfying, and you know your puzzle is solved.

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The biggest and best tool you use is none other than your mind, and that's going to

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come with a great education. The curriculum that creates gemologists originated in 1929

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by Robert Shipley, who would later establish both the Gemological Institute of America,

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known as the GIA, as well as the American Gem Society, or abbreviated as AGS.

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I'm personally very lucky that I went to the campus at a time the GIA was expanding into their

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current Carlsbad headquarters. According to the Dean of Students, the GIA is a commitment

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for the mission of consumer protection and providing information in their interests.

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Why I went there is because of the three ways that the GIA is designed to serve the industry

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and the public. One, it offers lab services to provide a third party evaluation between buyer

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and seller. So we were already using those when I went into my Goldsmithing apprenticeship.

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It's the lab report you would get on your diamond. It would be a treatment report that you would get

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on colored stones. Two, it delivers an education that trains us to go into the lab or become an

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ambassador of what happens with lab services out in our jobs around the world. And three,

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the research. According to Kimberly Overland, the Dean of Students, quote, we have PhDs and

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researchers on staff that are constantly looking at the industry, looking at stones, looking at

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changes and new findings and treatments, unquote. And that gets shared in the media we subscribe to

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and the symposiums we attend to stay on the razor's edge of priceless knowledge, developments,

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and techniques to hold true to the integrity that gemology is.

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Thank you for listening and learning with me. I would love you to share this project with people

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finding rare beauty in today's world and throughout our times. Until the next episode, keep your own

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story sparkling.