This week was largely spent on Asha production with a large batch going into coating, and we were able to restock a limited amount of Amora enhanced Moissanite (6.5mm and 8mm rounds).

We also had our 3, $100 message board giveway contest this week and those winners have been announced on the global thread.

Finally, last week we made one more charitable donation to Defenders of Wildlife which was trying to raise $40K for help in protecting wild bison that were being harassed when they leave the protected areas of Yellowstone in search for food in the winter due to snow.

Unfortunately, that will likely be our last charitable donation for a bit as get into the extreme financials for the upcoming equipment purchases, but happy that we could help protect an American icon in the interim.

The full post, with all the news, can be found on our message board, here.

Have a great weekend!

A quick aside – it did not appear that this update was going to happen as of yesterday b/c all of Washington was basically shut down this week. We had a large snow storm, then a big ice storm with up to .4 inch of freezing rain, and then even more snow on top of that. That led to mass power outages and 250K in our area are still without power now. Even our office has a tree down in front of the entrance.

BTD’s office will not re-open for shipping until 1/23 (Monday). Fortunately our websites and servers are all located in British Columbia, Canada and so these remained fully functional.

Hardness testing results for the Amora enhancement process:
The results, averaged from 10 different tests done on different parts of the stone (pre and post) – higher GPa means higher hardness:

C&C raw stone / pre-treatment: = 38.477 GPa
Amora enhanced / post-treatment: = 39.045 GPa

In other words, an approximate 1.5% *increase* in hardness.

And now, finally to unveil the Amora gem in its H&A cushion cut:

the full post - along with a video of the Amora gem H&A cushion – can be found on our message board, here.

The video can be viewed on our message board, here.
The ring in the video features a 1ct, 6.5mm Asha simulated diamond.

With regards to Amora production, the tentative plan, due to the rather overwhelming cost, is to move towards some limited production by not setting up with the ‘optimal’ configuration, but one that gets some basic production underway.
The tentative timeline for the limited production is thus late Summer at this point, but could move forward or backward as things progress.
But, some people have asked for the latest rough dates and that would be the current best guesstimate.

1 – Custom cutting will open up next week for Avarra sapphires, emeralds and rubies.
2 – We’re working on a new Asscher cut yellow diamond that should finish up between  1.6 and 1.8ct, so a larger stone overall.
3 – We have a very large amount of Asha H&A rounds currently in progress.
4 – We’re hoping to restock on Asha studs, and begin offering all styles with the Protektor back systems. The price on that option has actually held steady while the pricing for the friction backs has gone up. As a result, it makes sense to offer by default the Protektor systems for a bit more money but one that offers a lot more relative bang for the buck.

Hopefully next week we’ll have the Amora H&A cushion video and photo to show, so hope to see you then.

The full post, with much more news and information can be found on our message board, here!

First Amora gem updates: mostly good news.

The first good news is that we have finalized the new cut for the Amora princess. It is a true princess with outstanding proportions and top notch appearance.

The next cut we’ll look at is likely the Asscher cut.

Also, hardness testing – we do have the new sample nearly ready for testing and hopefully that test will be done within the next two weeks and we’ll know where the Amora gem (and C&C moissanite) lie in the bigger scheme of hardness ratings.

For reference, the quick list of the worlds hardest bulk materials is roughly this:

• Diamond
•  Boron Nitride
•  Boron Carbide
•  Amora Gem / Moissanite by C&C (unclear on order until C&C hardness test)…both fall under ‘silicon carbide’ family
• Sapphire (Alumina)

The rest of the update can be found on our message board, here!

We had a great holiday season with record sales – approx. 21% increase in total sales revenue vs. last year.

Our web traffic and the message boards themselves have continued to expand at a rapid pace.  We recently set an all-time single day high of 6,714 unique visitors in one day in December.

So, to celebrate that, its time for another message board giveaway!

More news and further details of the contest can be found on the message board.

The video for the round brilliant is here:

And the Amora enhanced Cushion cut Moissanite:

Additional videos are posted on our message boards, which you can view here:

Heart, radiant, and other Amora enhanced Moissanite shapes

]]> http://betterthandiamond.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/new-amora-moissanite-videos-in-hd/feed/ 0 BetterThanDiamond.com http://betterthandiamond.wordpress.com/2011/12/16/friday-night-news-13/ http://betterthandiamond.wordpress.com/2011/12/16/friday-night-news-13/#comments Sat, 17 Dec 2011 04:41:09 +0000 BetterThanDiamond.com http://betterthandiamond.wordpress.com/?p=687 ]]> The president of BTD has posted his weekly Friday night blog post, with the latest news and updates.
This is the last official Friday Night News post of 2011!

This week was primarily focused on getting orders handled and shipped in time for Christmas, so not as much progress with the Amora gem.

However, we did acquire some very expensive chemistry modeling software that will be used to help optimize production of the gem itself. This is actually a very important piece as we can run simulations that would take a professional chemist many months to do by hand, literally in minutes.

So, the main goal for 2012 is to get the Amora gem into production…and we expect to have the decision on the patent situation for the US by Spring 2012.

There’s more!  The remainder of the blog post can be read on our message boards!
Click here to read the rest of this week’s news!

We’ve restocked and expanded our Krupps cut Asha offerings, including sizes from 6x4mm up to 12x10mm.

And we restocked the Asha Hearts & Arrows rounds in 4.5mm, 5mm, 6.5mm, 7.5mm and 8mm.

I ordered an 8.5 mm (3ct.) cushion cut amora moissanite stone (from moissyco) and took it to my jeweler to see what he thought of it.  He warned me that he might like a cz better because moissanite can look green/yellow.

Well I took it in and we when he took it out and placed it on a setting, he was blown away! He told me that it’s the best moissanite he has ever seen!

He also told me that he would be proud if I told people that the entire ring was from his store (which is the most high end jewelry store in my area). He also told me not to ever feel like anyone knows it’s a moissanite because NOBODY could tell it’s not a mined diamond by looking at it! My search is over! I finally found what I want and I hope this helps any of you who are unsure.