While mining for diamonds, what is done with the tiniest ones?
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Aster (
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August 4th, 2013
I was wondering how this works. They have huge equipment to mine for diamonds so when they dig up a load of dirt what do they do with the tiny diamonds? How can they even see them in all that dirt ? Are they easily stolen by workmen?
Yes; it’s obvious I know as much about it as a two year old.
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3 Answers
They get used in industrial applications and tools, for example as diamond dust to grind materials, especially to polish the large diamonds, and they get used to reinforce the tips of power tools.
The diamonds that end up in industrial applications are the ones that are not clear enough for gem use (some diamonds are nearly opaque). If the diamond is clear, it will get passed on to the gem trade no matter what its size.
The smallest diamonds are cut and sold in bulk as “diamond melee”, and are used in jewelry for creating diamond “fields”. Melee isn’t worth nearly as much as larger stones, so there’s not much incentive to steal melee. The vast majority of gem-quality diamonds are melee grade.
In diamond mines, theft is a huge problem. It’s as easy as swallowing a diamond while the security guards aren’t looking (the process of recovering that swallowed diamond is also likely to rule out the theft of very small stones). Thieving miners have used body crevices, hollow arrow shafts, even homing pigeons smuggled in lunch boxes to get diamonds out of mines.
Mining companies combat theft by trying to minimize the chances that miners will actually encounter individual stones. So most of the process is highly automated, and miners mostly just move ore. They’re not picking through it for diamonds.
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