Lead Filled Ruby

Today s fracture filled stones have surface reaching fractures filled primarily with a high lead content glass.

Lead filled ruby. Gia agl agta egl usa grs or stone group labs. The glass can be damaged through contact with a variety of chemicals. The lead glass filled rubies are made by the process called infilling. Lead glass filled rubies give off a blue and or orange flash under a microscope.

Lead glass filled rubies first appeared on the market in 2004. The problem is that there are thousands and thousands of sellers who will try to sell you a composite ruby as the real thing. Since natural ruby is very hard and durable jewelers don t usually worry about applying heat to ruby when setting a stone. But applying heat to a fracture filled ruby can melt the glass filling leaving a sorry looking stone full of surface cracks.

Lead glass filled rubies also known as composite rubies are nearly worthless as described in my previous post. Others will simply conceal the truth. So these fracture filled rubies sell at a fraction of the cost of untreated rubies of similar color. Almost all of the ruby merchandise sold in macy s fine jewelry department has a base of the mineral corundum and is lead glass filled.

Because lead glass has a much lower melting point than ruby setting these stones can be dangerous. They also contain lots of trapped gas bubbles. Macy s told nbc news. They are made by inducing the lead glass by 15 to 50 and these glasses are the mineral components of ruby that exhibits same property.

Lead glass filled ruby is the composition of ruby made from its same natural mineral elements. According to the gemological institute of america gia the gaaj laboratory in japan issued a lab alert about rubies they had seen that had large numbers of fractures filled with high lead content glass which made them appear very transparent. But in my opinion if a person spends 1 000 or more on a ruby they should only purchase ones graded by one of the big gem labs. Please subscribe to our channel so you dont miss any updates when we upload another educational video on emeralds ruby sapphire or any other gemstone.

Since the treatment is easy to detect it is almost always disclosed and the price is adjusted accordingly. In addition some have been heated.