Blue Spinel Vs Sapphire

Spinel pg 2 red spinel pink spinel other colors.

Blue spinel vs sapphire.

Sapphire ruby. It is easy to understand how early gem traders confused spinel with ruby and sapphire for over 1000 years. A case in point is the internal diffusion seen in a heat treated sapphire induced as the titanium from rutile silk inclusions was dissolved into the crystal lattice of the host sapphire at high temperatures. Blue topaz is the result of irradiation treatment and tanzanite is often heated to enhance its blue color.

Red and blue spinel. The bright reds and deep blues are spectacular specimens. Tourmalines pg 4 paraiba tourmalines. Blue sapphire is the most famous.

Spinel occurs in a wide variety of colors. Garnet pg 2 understanding garnets. This has to some degree closed the spinel vs. In the deeper blue colors there are only softer stones such as kyanite and iolite.

There is no telling how many spinels have actually been sold as sapphire. Other varieties are more common and less sought after. Blue exemplars are the second rarest spinel gems. Blue spinel vs sapphire.

Sapphire ruby pg 2 ruby. Spinel pg 3 synthetic spinel. Discovered accidentally when scientists were experimenting to try and produce a flame fusion blue synthetic sapphire spinel s great advantage is that it can be made to reproduce almost all colors except purple the blue synthetic spinel sapphire imitant is much more genuine looking than a synthetic blue spinels imitating synthetic sapphires. Blue spinel hues range from violet blue through very slightly greenish blue.

Tourmalines pg 3 pink red yellow and other colors. Blue spinel is a rather special stone. This dissolved titanium pairs with iron to increase the amount of blue color in the stone. Man made spinel is used extensively.

However hundreds of years ago when spinel was found together with sapphire and ruby it was impossible to tell them apart. In fact spinel is in great demand among gemologists and gem connoisseurs. There are few gems that occur naturally in blue. Its cheaper than sapphire and is very light.

Nevertheless spinel s price even in those cases is still lower than the price of sapphire and ruby. With modern gemological tools we can easily distinguish between blue spinel and blue sapphire. Blue spinel is a gem made of a compund of iron and sapphire.