Ten years ago, the acquisition of a beautiful piece of jewelry with natural stone was fraught with some problems. Now the choice has significantly increased, and the technology for processing stones. In addition, the jewelry market has recently been flooded with analogs of precious and semi-precious stones manufactured at the factory.
Instructions
Step 1
Jewelry with expensive stones such as diamond, ruby, sapphire, citrine and others is not often counterfeited. The fact is that an expensive product with a noble stone must be accompanied by a certificate indicating the weight of the stone in carats and its purity. But semiprecious stones are counterfeited everywhere, making them from various materials, or artificially ennobling them. Let's take a look at how to identify a real stone from a fake by its appearance and its physical and chemical properties.
Step 2
Turquoise.
It is faked quite often, I use blue smalt to imitate it. When choosing your turquoise jewelry, arm yourself with a sevenfold magnifying glass. Look through the magnifying glass at the pebbles. Dark blue spherical or angular particles against the background of a lighter substrate are a sign of the artificial origin of the stone. A homogeneous structure, on the contrary, confirms the natural origin of turquoise. The authenticity of the mineral can also be judged by the presence of areas of brown or brown color in the blue mass.
Step 3
Amber is a favorite stone of counterfeiters, who know many ways to obtain the so-called. pressed amber. Dust, crumbs and other waste left after processing natural amber are used for its production. The stone pressing is based on its ability to acquire amazing plasticity at temperatures from 140 to 200 ° C without air access. It is even easier to make imitation amber from some plastics. When buying jewelry with amber, rub the surface of the stone with wool. If the amber is real, it will quickly become electrified and will attract small debris.
Step 4
Pearl counterfeiters started out with glass beads that were covered with a thin layer of crushed fish scales. Now imitation pearls are made from alabaster, opal glass, plastic or mother-of-pearl. Try pearls "to the teeth" and find out if they are real. If a pearl squeaks disgustingly on your teeth, then it is real. Also look at the price - real pearls are not cheap. By the way, Japanese cultured pearls are not considered fake. They are essentially the same pearls.
Step 5
Agate and carnelian. These stones are often colored. And they do it from the inside, thanks to the microporous structure of minerals. Even in ancient times, this property was known to people. The craftsmen of that time boiled stones in honey for several days, and then boiled them over a fire. Now agate and carnelian are dyed not only in old ways, but also in more modern ways. Tint of a stone is not its falsification. But tinted carnelians and agates increase sharply in price, although they have no fundamental differences from unpainted stones.
