Ruby Or Garnet How To Tell

Pyrope almandine and andradite are the most common red garnets.

Ruby or garnet how to tell.

Now look at the rainbow or spectrum and if there are yellow and green bands then your stone is likely not a ruby. View the garnet in both natural and artificial light. To do this hold your stone up to a bright light source and move it around until the stone creates a rainbow. Rubies red corundums that contains aluminum oxide and chromium generally are more valuable than red garnets so it is important to be able to tell the difference between them when buying gemstones.

Real rubies glow with a deep vivid almost stoplight red. This simply means that a ruby is a more durable mineral than the garnet. If it is a real ruby however know that darker stones are usually worth more than lighter stones. Perform a hardness test.

Garnets can be be found in a variety of colors. If you are mistaking a ruby for a red garnet this is an easy way to distinguish between the two as rubies will not display green or yellow bands. Fake gems are often dull. If the light reflects a rainbow of colors including bands of yellow and green the odds are you are looking at a garnet.

In terms of their colors while a garnet has a wide variety of colors other than red such as green brown and orange a ruby is usually red. Garnets are a 7 7 5 on the mohs scale. Starting with their toughness a garnet has only been given 6 5 to 7 5 on the mohs scale while a ruby has been given a solid 9 0. Another way to determine if your stone is a ruby or a garnet is to examine the spectrum.

Holding up a garnet to the light can assist you in determining whether or not you are looking at a garnet or a ruby. A ruby is a doubly refractive stone so it refracts light in a much different way than a garnet which is singly refractive. The rainbow image you see within a garnet will be much more clear due to its singly refractive property. A real garnets will change colors in both lights.

This is because a ruby s makeup is such that it absorbs yellow and green and will not reflect them in that. Even though garnet is also a gemstone it is a semiprecious gemstone with a significantly low value compared to ruby. If you are holding a ruby the rainbow image you see will be blurred and appear almost as one rainbow on top of another. They are light but not bright if the gem is more of a dark red then it may be garnet instead of a ruby.