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  • Painting & Digging - a polishing technique to change the angles of the upper & lower girdle facets.
    This technique maximizes the weight yield from the diamond rough. Significant painting can retain 3% of the diamond's weight, which might be important if you are close to the 1 ct mark. In addition, digging out can remove clarity characteristics (inclusions).
  • Pattern arrangement and contrast of the bright and dark areas of the diamond.
    This results from light reflections.
  • Pavilion - The underside of the diamond between the girdle and the culet.
  • Pavilion Angle - the angle formed by the plane of the pavilion facets and the girdle.
  • Pear Cut - See Shape.
  • Pinpoints - very small crystals that look like dots under 10x magnification.
    They are certainly not eye visible.
  • Pit - a small opening that looks like a tiny white dot.
  • Point - one one-hundredth of a carat (1/100th).
  • Polish - The overall condition of the diamond's surface.
    Diamond can take a better polish than any other gemstone, due to its hardness. However, as result of this hardness, diamond has to be polished with another diamond. Polish is graded on a scale of Excellent to Poor and each tick down in grade (caused by abrasions, nicks, scratches, etc.) reduces the value of the diamond.
  • Polish Lines - Fine, parallel grooves and ridges remaining after the polishing process.
    Heavy polish lines emanating from a cavity or other surface inclusion are known as drag lines.
  • Princess Cut - See Shape.