If you’ve begun to suspect that your diamond is a fake, there are quicker ways to tell than by paying a jeweler to appraise it for you (although it doesn’t hurt to have authentic certification papers for insurance purposes, so you might eventually want to get that done). And one of them is the “sandpaper test”. You might be wondering just exactly what sandpaper has to do with telling if your diamond is real or not. If you’re worried that you actually have to attack your priceless stone with a rough piece of sandpaper, don’t be! As a matter of fact, you will have to take sandpaper to surface, but if your diamond is real, you need not fear: there will be no damage.
You have probably heard that diamonds are the hardest natural substance on Earth, and this is the truth. On the Mohs scale of mineral hardness, diamond is listed at a 10 (being the hardest on a scale of 1 to 10) because when mineralogist Friedrich Mohs tried to scratch it, he couldn’t, no matter what natural samples he employed in the task. It has an absolute hardness of 1,600 (while talc, for example, has a hardness of 1 and steel, although it is not natural, comes out at about 6.5 on the Mohs scale with a relative hardness of approximately 85-90 – that’s a pretty big difference!). Even modern compounds have been unable to compete with diamond. And although the scale has been expanded to go up to 15 as a way to include substances that have been found since Mohs did his work, diamond is still at the top of the modified list with a hardness of 15.
But enough with the history lesson; back to the test. Lay a piece of sandpaper on a flat surface. You can use either wet or dry sandpaper. Then rub the diamond vigorously against the sandpaper. It’s that simple. If your stone scratches, it’s not real. You will end up with a ruined stone, but you shouldn’t worry too much about that since it is not, in fact, a diamond (and probably not worth much). If, on the other hand, it comes out unscathed, you’ll know your gemstone is real (and you should shell out a few bucks to get it appraised). Just be careful when conducting this test that you don’t accidentally scratch your setting, which is definitely not as hard as the diamond and will almost certainly become marred by this rough treatment.
