I have to test one ruby from this layout of
Mozambique ruby, the center stone because I have to document that this stone
is natural and has not been heated or altered in any way, and that it is totally
natural as it was found in the nature. Actually these stones are from the Gemfields Auction from Singapore, this is the catalogue
from the last auction and this were the roughs (gemstones) I checked there and
I decided to acquire for our collection a set of stones from this lot. They were so nicely matching and different in size that we could cut this layout and that's the final result but it needs to be a little bit tested now and confirmed that everything is ok so we need to take out the center stone. I'll put this down like that. okay This one is an amphibole crystal inclusion and if you if you have a very nice inclusion like this very outlined with no additional cracks around, then you know the stone is not heated it is exactly how it was found in nature. So now we have the proof, everything is documented, this very beautiful inclusion happens to be exactly in the center stone of the layout and now what we have to do is we have to make some high-tech tests that are not visible to the eye, but only to the high-tech machines. We have to measure the stone for authenticity, this one, with liquid nitrogen. [Sound of liquid nitrogen] The laser is now on the stone, we had to position it. So now we're shooting a ultraviolet laser to the stone and it creates emission. The light is sent out from the stone and that depends on the oxidation state of chromium and the quenching effect of iron so we captured this with a spectrometer and it shows it on the graph for example here we have the nanometers of the light from 200nm to 1000nm the laser was here at 405nm but what the stone is sending us out are these peaks. Actually there are red color peaks, a whole series of them so every gemstone sends out a different pattern of what we call photo luminescence, light induced by a laser and this pattern we register and then we compare: heated or not heated, stones from different origin and we keep them in our registry. And that's a fingerprint and what intensity
we have and how much is coming out, and this is all different from every gemstone to another one and then different origins. We have about forty thousand reference stones we measure them all through and make bookkeeping and homework and that is the information we apply to the customer stones and to the stones that come here also from Mozambican so we'll be catching up a lot of things, this is a
kind of a secret weapon you know it's an arms race between the guys that are making new treatments or cheating stones and and us you know who is playing the police in the gem industry and have to go after that. [Music] [Music] The Gemfields auction for rough rubies in Singapore is probably the biggest in the world right now so we had to go there and look and that was an opportunity to get very good stones and get an important collection for the laboratory. Nowadays the major source for rough rubies is this big mining operation in Mozambique and so we are testing stones for customers and so we have to know what is the source and we have to analyse the inclusions and all the properties in order to compare them with the customer stones. It was a really unique opportunity you know
to go to that auction and see in a very short amount of time like thousands of stones normally you have to look one by one they appear here and there and you needed almost a decade to see these number of stones so it's like a fast train of experience. You look in the silk with a microscope or what? With a torch I mean in magnification? No, no by eye Here you have the c-axis Yes, the c-axis is mostly where the silk is This is another grade and you can see the difference with what you are looking at This is more tabular and basically you will all cut them in the c-axis How do you determine the c-axis? With my eyes No dichroscope? No. Which light do you use for that? Natural light Do you want to look through here? Do you see two colours? Yes, yes, yes Now do you see two colours? yeah yeah yeah. See what happen? you have an extreme homogeneity, it is like a group
of shade. What point was that? You mean the color saturation? This table number five, ok? Yeah. Schedule H The guy who wants to buy he has to buy everything. It is extremely homogenetic, the guy who wants to buy he will
make a set straight away. So you saying the guy who buys this lot can make immediately a pair? A set. A very high quality set. The lots they were quite different somewhere
like very high-value some were like a little bit lower value and then they were also mixed so the private viewing your viewing yourself and looking these stones very carefully. One of the flat stones in here would be fine. But within the lots that were like a lot of surprises so you had to be very cautious. Very important is to be very critical with the stones. You don't have to go there to look at a stone and say: "oh it's nice red and big and all it has to be a stone over 10 carat". Every single stone you have to very carefully look at it and think it can be the end of your project you can totally overpay it you can lose everything that you made before just in one or two stones, so you have to be you know it's it's a to be or not to be experienced with the stones. But I would say that primary produces that
I am skeptical probably one primary does and the other one doesn't. You see this one his, the other one is not. You see that? So do you think this is just higher iron content? Yeah no I mean what my theory is, spontaneously. Once you have a primary which the stones did not move away from and this primary is fluorescent then a high percentage of that production will be fluorescent because it's not mixing in from all different spots where it's formed so then it's the spot itself and the geology that made it and once you're moving away to another primary it might not be the same, and then the lucky spot. That's the lucky spot. But it's very amazing, it's beautiful, it's fantastic. I learned a lot from from the buyers so one strategy is for example you want to make a big layout of stones, a matching one, very slightly change in size and then entering into a very important centre stone and you want to make a necklace maybe you have already your end-consumer in mind that it's asking all the time to find something like that and then when you see a lot in the in the ocean you have to see whether it's possible from the stones to make such a necklace or do you decide that I make a necklace and one or the other of the stone may be suitable for a single
stone. So the story is this is the best color from
the lot. It is shining already before it's cut. It's 3 star. Once you have you found single stones that you are sure with your cutter that this one is going to cover your total investment on the lot to make a discovery you know you from your experience before from from cutting these stones you have an experience and you get advice and you think okay if this stone comes out good it will cover the whole lot so the rest is like profit and we can make additional smaller stones and we can do this and you have to decide whether you're going to keep the stone exactly how it is or whether you have to heat treat the stone a little bit or warm it and have a kind of strategy you know on the stones so you have to separate them out this one stays natural, this one will be warmed, this one will be for a set, this one will be for single stone. The table will be here so in this direction not much be orange should be coming
out. The light power is too much, it's difficult to say. Buying a rough (ruby) is a very risky business. You know you actually only know the value once you cut the stone because beauty and value comes only after cutting. You are prorducing quite a few stones guys. The face this side will be very flat. This side is good for face, it's a good bottom, not good for the camera, very difficult. So you have to put this factor in the equation
when you buy. You have to have a kind of a safety limit and if it goes bad that you're not losing too much but once you have competitors next to you that are bidding for the same rough, and you need to get a lot, you have to go to the maximum maximum that is potentially there for a rough stone so you might over bid the stone in order to
get it. This stone if there is no crack, though the rough is twelve and a half carat it can cut nearly seven and a half carat but because of this inclusion
here it will cut only 6 carats. So I have to be extremely careful. Because of the value of the stone is high so the estimation has to be very correct. Wether it's 5, 6 or 7 ct makes a huge difference. Yes, huge difference. One stone in there they had a crack, and this
crack let the price drop of the stone like to only
25%. If you tilt here it's a very bad crack. Can you see it? Yeah on the side here. Yes here it has gone right inside and this cannot be taken out if we take out it would be a very flat stone because here you have to take out the silk here you see up to hear its silk. If you don't look carefully these three four stones and pick up that one stone that has a lower value, well you would have over paid the lot and you have the surprise later you know it's almost like, these buyers they have to look very carefully you know, risk their money
on the table. You have to cut the stone somewhere in the world where there are experienced cutters and there are a few very important cutting centers in the world, I don't want to say which one is more important but one of them is Thailand one of them is Sri Lanka, so it went to one of the important cutting centers in the world, so we ended up in Sri
Lanka. Come in. So we are looking at this 22 carat stone, Mr. Punsiri is saying it's quite a clean stone. Yes. Surface color of orange and brown maybe will
go away after preform. Yes. Looking at cushion maybe. Yes, cushion. When you shorten the stone like this it's going to be a cushion. Square cushion. Yes We have 22 here but do you think we can keep ten? We expected like 12. That is impressive because you know our book we are only written for this 9 to 10. What do you think of this stone, this is the
other one from the big lot it's 19 carat. This one we liked very much over there because this one is a very good shape to start off with. Yeah. This looks to be cushion shape. This will be top quality. They have a lot of experience maybe more so in sapphires but also recently in rubies and I have a special cutting style they've developed and extremely experienced cutters so you have to bring the most important rough that matters to you to the best cutter in the world or some of the best cutters in the world. Thank you very much that I can have a look to the cutting of one of the most important
rubies in the world. This does not happen everyday. It's all very exciting. It's important. He is the best cutter in Sri Lanka. So when I come in this room you know the guys moved in with their personal equipment into the dealer's office, you know, I was like, what is this? You know is this expert tool or well you know anybody can buy that you know but it's not the machine. It's the experience, you know, When you look into the preform in his hands, how he can make the smallest angle with the rough and turn it and make it and make his decision you know to put the table here and then he takes it out and he grinds the stone down from 20 carat to 15 into 14 and it takes it off and often the cts come down, you know, all the investors are like: oh my god you know look at this huh what is happening you know. They have to trust him totally you know and it's very cool the guy. When you look at his hand it's not actually his hand anymore it's like a part of the machine. He doesn't need to have a dimension meter to find out what is the best dimension. He tastes it with his hand it makes a 3D image in his brain somehow and he can feel it and see it. When we saw the stone at the auction we had
estimated 8 to 9ct. The people that have cut or preformed stones their whole life they will have so many mistakes made in their life and so much experience gained of it. They will not make it on your stone. They did it before. Now he's studying the stone, gets advice from the cutter now, then it goes back talking on the cutting process, preforming, weight loss process. They have all these details of how fast the wheel has to spin what kind of metal this wheel has to be, what kind of powder, the diamond powder they use and the grains and the quality of the diamond powder and then they have the goniometer to make the angles and to very precisely leverage it with the hand in connection with the goniometer in three dimensions and to make the facets in the right angle so now we have to decide when you make these angles and the number of steps how many you make and how bulgy you want to make the stone in order to keep the weight high but still have sparkling reflections face up. There was one stone that had a little a bit blue zone you know and the guys managed to tilt the table such a little bit against the optical axis and shift the culett on the stone such a little bit to one side that when looking at the stone the blue zone was gone. Is it there still, the blue? I think it's hidden. Look at this big face, it looks like a 12
ct. The light didn't pass through it. it was perfectly red and his little blue stone that normally gives a little bit of purplish overtone was gone, you know, that was master strike I couldn't believe
it you know. So then the stone came back from Sri Lanka and came back to Thailand and and then you look in to the stone and you see minor imperfections and particularly around the girdle that is the middle part it went in the upper and the lower part of the stone the crown and pavilion that is the girdle and this girdle was only polished. So what you can do is you can put a lot of small facets on the girdle so you make one one facet next, next, next, next, next - maybe hundred Facets around the girdle so when the light passes through the stone it brings you back the three to five percent of lost light into the stone. So he will cut the crown first. He will be cutting the crown, there is a little, there's a little small hole. He is closing the hole first. On the table and on the crown, so we have
only 17 points to work with. It's 10.17. Our instruction is it cannot go below 10. So it works so first on the crown which is
visible. Yes He wants to make the facets on the side a bit more equal and shine in the lustre might come out a little bit more. So there was this skilled cutter again that is used to improve to stone after it is already there, almost and makes this extra facet you know just also with the hand you know be very small small around the girdle you know it was fascinating you know. Still has a small hole? Yeah. In the pavilion side inside now we're looking there's two holes but this there's one big hole which I don't think we can take out because it's gonna affect the weight and he said the proportion of the stone so we might have to have sacrifice and leave that the way it is and then there's a hole right on the top which we're gonna try to take out now. There's still another hole here this is the one that he doesn't want to play around with but he feels that if he goes too much it's not gonna be equal on the two sides so he's gonna leave this hole as it is on the stone. So how much is it now? 10.15. And when he started we had? 10.17. He made the facets connect with one another, and he was able to take out two little holes and we only lost two points Dr. Peretti to that side please. That's the one. Yes this is the one. The material is very clean. So seeing this is one of the first time that there are exactly rough to a very expensive stone where it's
been filmed. Exactly, I think so. I think these stones are quietly done then and usually it's never filmed. You don't know from the beginning what comes out later, you can not anticipate the outcome. The material is very clean, very clean very crystal. This is one of the rarest Ruby in the world. It's not the rarest but it's in the league. It's in the league. And rubies don't get so nice and so big. And it's a very fantastic opportunity we got to take this stone straight from the rough up to the finished ready form. Yeah, that has never been done before. Look at the piece of rough in Singapore and to more or less decide what will come out is a art, it's a very difficult task. [Music] [Music] [Music] This is a an amazing collection rubies that is for sure cut in various shapes, pear shape a long cushion a square cushion an antique cushion a heart shape and an oval. How many years are you now in the trade Santpal? I started when I was 18, so I'm 54 now, it's 36 years in the trade. And how many time have you cut such a collection in your life. First time, I have never done this before. I have never seen this before. Six rubies like this, in stock at any one time, is a lifetime experience it's not easy, it's never been easy, the first auction we got these beautiful stones like this, the following auction there were no such stones six stones in one lot of this quality. So that was our dream we have followed-up this one time. We fulfilled the dream that has to fly all over the world to do that. The stone was found in Mozambique and it was auctioned in Singapore and it was cut in Sri Lanka and it was re-cut in Thailand. And now it's ready, and now it's here. [Music] [Music] [Music]
