Oct 4th, 2015

Canadian Diamonds – Rough Images

Canadian Rough diamonds have their own distinctive morphology. Unlike some Russian and African diamonds, they are seldom equidimensional. They often have inverted cube faces and sometimes severely irregular forms. But that is just on the outside. The atomic structure is pretty decent and seldom would one have a diamond with lamellar twinning or internal graining. The problems lie normally on or just under the surface, where they often exhibit fibrous growth near the surface.

Following are some images of typical Canadian Diamonds.

Octadodec with irregular growth and protrusions.

 

Octadodec with multiple irregular growth features.

 

Octadodec with irregular growth on the 100 faces.

Frosted elongated octadodec.

 

Octadodec with irregular growth on one 100 face.

 

Octadodec with irregular growth on the 110 and 100 faces.

 

Elongated octadodec.

 

Elongated crystal with irregular growth.

 

Flattened octadodec twin.

 

This is a very interesting crystal (half an octadodec) from the Diavik mine. This crystal had one part with resorption on the 110 plane with a hillock finish as in the following picture.

 

Hillock finish with a small section of twinning at the lower end of the crystal where the hillocks are oblique to the rest on the crystal.