How Do You Identify A Rough Ruby?
Identifying a rough ruby is difficult to differentiate from rubillite, red spinel, tourmaline, garnet, and even harder from pink sapphire, generally accepted by professional gemologists to be simply a lighter, pinker version of the same stone. Thus, the determination between ruby and other red gems turns on color. As color is the visual interpretation of a specific point along the light spectrum, the easiest way to identify ruby is with a dichroscope, an instrument that looks like a longer version of a jeweler’s loupe and uses internal prisms to separate light into its individual vibrational directions as caused by its passing through the stone. Once the light frequencies are clearly separated,` it becomes easy to identify the bi-tonal, or dichroic, signature of a ruby. Hold the rough stone directly in front of a white light source so the light shines through the rough stone. Touch the lens of the dichroscope to the stone, and look through the eye piece. Note how many squares of color
