Sapphire glass types

Q.Is sapphire glass sapphire glass? Are there differing types & qualities with softer ones being more chip resistant and harder ones more scratch resistant. Is the sapphire glass on a Rolex the same as that on an Oris?

A.One easy way to scratch any sapphire crystal is to go out with a girl friend wearing a diamond set bracelet on her right wrist and you are holding her hand with your left hand (or vice versa if you wear your watch on the right). Girls wearing diamond set pieces of jewellery are the only natural enemies of men's sapphire crystal watches. I understand the market for "natural" gems even less than I do that for watches. "Synthetic" rubies/sapphires/emeralds etc. are chemically similar to natural ones - they are made of the same elements and have the same hardness and other properties. Experts can tell the two apart under high magnification (using some of the clues given below) but to the naked eye they are the same, yet the "natural" gems are worth many times more. This is unlike diamonds where the current substitutes (zirconia, etc.) are not really diamond (although they are making progress with true synthetic diamonds as well, though large colorless stones are still elusive). Eventually they should be able to grow diamond "boules" as well - these would be very desirable as substrates for semiconductors because of diamonds wonderful heat conduction properties. I would expect that a by-product of this would be diamond watch crystals. This is off some distance in the future, not something I'd expect within the current decade.

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