Information on Rough Diamonds

Rough diamonds are basically diamonds before they have been cleaned and polished up, and so it is rough diamonds which are found and mined from exotic areas of the world such as the Caribbean and Africa. Rough diamonds are still worth money, although not as much as they are worth once they have gone through the polishing and other processes and made to look like the diamonds that you see in retail stores.

About Rough Diamonds

Basically when you learn about the qualities and characteristics of rough diamonds you are learning about regular diamonds at the same time because, even though they may look incredibly different, they are actually the same thing.

Diamonds were first discovered about 2,500 years ago in India, and the ancients originally believed that they were splinters from the stars, or perhaps crystallized lightning. Most people associate diamonds as being a colorless stone, but in fact they are occasionally found with a strong, bright color, such as green, red, amber, blue and canary yellow.

Often times in order to improve the appearance of diamonds, they will be laser drilled and sometimes even infilled, which is the process where a foreign substance is used to fill the surface cavities of the diamond in order to give it a better aesthetic appearance. You can usually not tell when this has been done to a diamond if it has been done properly and is usually only detectable as a surface only enhancement and reads differently under a spectroscope than other diamonds.

Diamonds are known for being the most durable of all gemstones however you still need to take proper care of them. Household chemicals can be very harmful to them as they may discolor the diamonds or damage the mountings. If you ever have diamonds that you want to clean, you want to use special jewelry cleaner and lukewarm water to do so.

Buying Diamonds

You can basically either go into a regular diamond retail store to purchase diamonds, or you can go mining yourself, get a rough diamond and have the work done to it to make it a real diamond. It all depends on your preferences and the amount of time and energy that you have to spend.

After all, mining can take up a lot of time, and so it is definitely something that you may have to work a while at and you may have to travel around to a few different areas in order to come up with even a single diamond.