A spark seems to be inside a gem and disappears when the stone is rotated. A line appears on a facet, but when cleaned, it disappears. Something stays visible from a few positions and looks like it’s inside the gemstone.…

When you encounter a stone you don’t recognize, your natural instinct will be to try to identify its name right away. The hue makes you think of X, the brightness of Y, and the quick look through a loupe gives…

Select a clean specimen stone, place it in the tips of gem tweezers, lift a 10x loupe up to one eye, and keep both eyes open. Move the specimen towards the loupe instead of moving the loupe back and forth…

The colour of a gemstone is not a sufficient basis for identification. A red stone could be a ruby, a green stone could be an emerald, and a colourless stone could be a diamond, but colour is only the first…