Polished Diamonds – Inside & Out

Part 4 - Holes Grenville Millington BA(Hons), FGA, RJDip Jan 2015

So far in the first three parts we have looked at standard features of polished diamonds, albeit
possibly uncommon examples, but in this article we focus on two specific diamonds. The first stone is
rather small and would be completely overlooked by most people as it only weighs one hundredth of
a carat. I tend to look at every stone I purchase through a 10x lens, even these tiny diamonds that
are used for setting in ring shoulders or as border stones in lower priced cluster rings, etc. So, if I am
buying 5 carats of these diamonds then I shall be picking up and examining 500 stones. Let me say
that these stones will not be graded with the four 'Cs' – but just to see if they are commercially okay.
Even so, I was viewing such a parcel of these stones with enough concentration to pick out the first
stone I present here, 1a.

1a. Diamond of 0.01ct, 1.3mm.

The diamond, as you can see, is probably smaller than a standard pinhead, and, as you can perhaps
make-out in an enlarged view, a single-cut, or eight-cut (an octagonal table with an eight-facet
surround), 1b.
1b. A closer view of the single-cut diamond, 0.01ct.

If you look very closely at photo 1b, you may just make-out a pink dot near the bottom of the stone..
This dot is my finger, which is visible through the diamond – through a hole! I couldn't believe this
myself! Surely not? A transfer to the microscope was required, 2.

2a. A hole through the diamond 0.01ct, c50x.

As you can see, it looks like an eclipse of the sun! A black hole that is slightly off-circular. Another
view is afforded in 2b.

2b. An oblique view of the hole shown in 2a,

c55x.

What about the other side of this diamond? Photos 2c and 2d show the view from the pavilion side.

2c, 2d. Pavilion view of hole in 0.01ct diamond, c60x.

Now that you can see the hole from both ends you immediately notice something unusual. The hole
in the table has a sharp perimeter but the hole on emerging from the pavilion has a broadening
diameter. Also, the hole wall, as seen in 2c & 2d, has concentric shallow ribs, although the part
nearer the table seems to be smooth. I recall that just to convince myself what I was seeing was
correct (i.e. a hole) I managed to thread a very fine orange fibre through it and, with the diamond plus
fibre safely stored in a polythene bag, took it along to my students to see in the gemmology class.
But, what were we looking at apart from a hole? This was before we had diamonds to contend with
that had had their dark inclusions reached by laser drill holes. I could not conceive that this hole was
natural. Although I hadn't seen one, I knew that some drawplates had been made from diamond. A
drawplate is usually a hardened steel plate (more like a block) with a series of graduated, tapered
holes for drawing wire into smaller and/or different shapes, such as round, oval, square, etc. The
wire is sharpened, like a pencil, so that its reduced end fits through one of the holes in the drawplate,
and the end is grasped by a pair of pliers and pulled through, forcing the wire to take on the shape of
the hole. It is then, if necessary passed through the next slightly smaller hole until the required gauge
is achieved, 3.

3. Steel drawplate cross-section with gold wire being drawn

through.

If a diamond was used, the diamond with the required hole

would be set into a larger steel supporting plate. Now
compare the diagram 3 to the diagram of our diamond, 4.

4. Diagram representing the hole in the 0.01ct diamond.

I believed that this diamond was cut from one that had been used as a drawplate. Once the students
had viewed this stone it was then housed in a standard folded paper packet and put away. This was
around 1980. At some stage later I removed the fibre from the hole (there must have been a reason,
but I forget). The story now jumps to around 2004.

Around 2004, during routine examining of a parcel of diamonds to purchase, I came across a brilliant-
cut that had an odd cluster of inclusions, but notably some pin-pricks on the table. In the years
between examining the two stones featured here we had, of course, witnessed the introduction of
laser drilling down to dark inclusions in order to bleach them, supposedly to make them less
noticeable. A tell-tale sign was a pin-prick on the surface of the diamond which indicated the laser
drill hole entrance. A microscope would then confirm the operation. Photo 5 is of a brilliant-cut
diamond with numerous laser drilled holes which have a slightly tapered shape. They are more or
less at right angles to the diamond facet surface.
 5.Mounted brilliant-cut diamond
showing numerous laser-drilled holes, c50x.

It was such a stone I expected to see when I placed this 0.07ct brilliant-cut diamond under the
microscope, 6a.

6a. Brilliant-cut diamond, 0.07ct, 2.7mm., with

light reflected from the table, c70x.

So far, I am still thinking that this is a laser treated stone, but I am curious about the grouping of so
many holes. A different viewing angle is seen in 6b which appears to show polishing drag marks
coinciding with the surface pits. If this is the case then the holes cannot have been drilled after
polishing, as is the case with laser-treated stones.
 6b. Brilliant-
cut diamond, 0.07ct, 2.7mm., with polishing drag marks on the table, c50x.

It was time to look with the darkfield illumination highlighting what was beneath the table facet, 6c,
6d.

The inclusion spots had a cuneiform shape and were arranged in two sets perpendicular to one
another. There was some similarity to the laser drill holes seen in photo 5, but they had a regularity
that wouldn't be seen in treated stones and the holes were not reaching any other inclusions.

6c, 6d. The inclusion cluster of cuneiform shapes in brilliant-ct diamond, 0.07ct, c60x, c100x.
They certainly looked like hollow cones, some of which reached the surface, but most were below the
surface, ruling out external drilling processes. I've drawn an exaggerated version, 7. They were
basically tapered holes with ribbed sides. Other views are shown in
8a,8b,8c.

7. Exaggerated diagram of the conical holes within the 0.07ct diamond.

8a. Oblique view of inclusions seen in 6c, c80x.

8b, 8c. Other views of cuneiform inclusions, which appear to be hollow cones, c65x, c100x.
I conclude that these cuneiform, cone-shaped inclusions are natural, with some of them producing
surface pits where they have been cut through with the polishing process. I've never seen anything
quite like them before, with the exception of laser-drilled holes, such as those shown in 5.

It was only after I had taken the photos you see here (except 5) in 2014 and viewed them together on
the computer screen that I realised the similarities between these two stones. Could the hole in the
small single-cut diamond be natural after all?

©Grenville Millington 2015

The papers in this series are:

Polished Diamonds-Part 1 Trigons Polished Diamonds-Part 2 Crystal Inclusions

Polished Diamonds-Part 3 Cleavage Polished Diamonds-Part 4 Holes

Polished Diamonds-Part 5 Thick-Thin Polished Diamonds-Part 6 Surface Damage

Polished Diamonds-Part 7 Internal strain Polished Diamonds-Part 8 Fluorescence

Polished Diamonds-Part 9 Other aspects