Grimball Jewelers
79 South Elliott Rd
Chapel Hill NC 27514
Ph (919) 929-2580
http://grimballjewelers.com/
Serving Chapel Hill, Durham, and Raleigh North Carolina
Make Grimball Jewelers your destination today for any jewelry need, whether it is an appraisal, custom work or repair. We do it all. Our expert staff can assist with our outstanding collections ranging from engagement rings to South Sea Pearls. We were voted Small Business of the Year by the Chapel Hill Carrboro Chamber of Commerce in 2002 and Best Jewelry Store by readers of the Chapel Hill News in 2005. Come by today to experience the elite jewelry store in Orange County.
We have strived since the 1970s to provide North Carolina with the best supplied, like our latest laser welder, and most expansive one shop jewelry experience.
Make today your chance to see the Grimball difference.
Diamond Basics - The Four C’s
A diamond is judged by four essential factors. These rate its beauty, quality, and value. They are known as "The Four C's: Cut, Color, Clarity, and Carat Weight.
1) Cut
The cut is referred to the make of the diamond, and it has significant importance to the beauty of the stone. Visually, a diamond’s brilliance is due to the facets. The top or crown facets allow for you to see the sparkle, and the bottom or pavilion facets reflect the light to the surface. Therefore, the higher quality cut results in the more light reflected in the stone. This reflected light can be judged in three ways: brilliance, dispersion (fire) and scintillation. These three components create the diamond’s beauty from the reflection of white light (brilliance), refracted or rainbow light (dispersion) and reflected light (scintillation). An ideal cut for round diamonds must follow strict parameters that once met mathematical models. Now, newly developed technology permits diamond evaluation based on the actual look of a diamond, avoiding leaking light through the pavilion. We here at Grimball Jewelers sell the Eightstar diamond, which follow the most rigorous standards, creating the highest quality diamond cut.
In the other diamond shapes such as princess, oval, emerald, and marquise there is no accepted “ideal” cut, but the American Gem Society Laboratory is in the process of developing parameters for measuring the performance of these cuts.
2) Color
Next to the sparkle of a diamond, people notice the color of the stone. Colorless diamonds are the best, yet this is almost unattainable. The Gemological Institute of America (GIA) grades a diamond’s color from D (colorless) to Z (brownish yellow). Despite D being the best, E and F are grades that also warrant the colorless label. Diamonds, although rare to begin with, are even more rare if they have strong shades of blue (like the Hope diamond), or red, green, bright yellow, etc. These are known as "fancies" in the trade, and they are beyond the grading scale.
3) Clarity
This refers to the flawlessness of a diamond. Most diamonds have natural imperfections that may appear as tiny black or white specks, minute cracks, grain lines, etc. These imperfections are called "inclusions" if they are internal to the stone, and "blemishes" if they are on its surface. A clarity grade is really a rating of the number, size, severity, and type of inclusions- the fewer/smaller the number of imperfections, the more fire and brilliance the diamond will have.
4) Carat Weight
Carat is the most understood of all the Cs. It does refer to the weight of a diamond not the size, though. A carat is two hundred milligrams, and has one hundred points. So a half carat diamond would be a fifty point stone. Most people connect carat weight with a certain size of diamond, so they visualize a "1-carat" diamond a certain way. However, many times the cut of the diamond may influence the size more than the weight.
Naturally, carat weight affects price- however in a "nonlinear" way. That is larger diamonds are rare, and more valuable, so a 1-carat diamond is worth more than two ½-carat diamonds.
