Jewels for Battleships

Today, for the first time, the U.S. is making its own synthetic jewels. It has to. Reasons:

> Over 4,000 jewels --sapphires and rubies --are used as bearings in the electrical devices of a modern battleship's engine room. Some 100 more jewels are in its fire-control mechanism. Another 100 are in the navigation instruments.

> Over 100 jewels are used in the instrument panel of a big U.S. bomber. Others are in its bombsight.

U.S. production of synthetic jewels has reached 1,000,000 karats* a month, is going up fast. But some 10,000 U.S. workers must still be trained to cut and finish the raw jewels into the delicate, adamantine bearings which will resist wear, corrosion, friction.

Five years ago a Massachusetts jewel cutter asked Army Ordnance officers if they were preparing a sure source of synthetic jewels for military instruments. He was told that the matter was too small to bother about.

A year and a half ago OPM desperately called in all U.S. firms who might be able to manufacture jewels, urged them to have a try at it. For the Nazis had overrun Holland and France, bottled up Switzerland --the countries whence the U.S. formerly imported nearly all its synthetic jewels (as many as 100,000,000 a year). Only one company, Union Carbide & Carbon, volunteered to make synthetics. It alone produced the great volumes of hydrogen and oxygen which are essential in making them.

Tricky Boules. Like natural rubies and sapphires,* synthetics are simply fused aluminum oxide. A tiny trace of chromium oxide makes jewels a ruby-red color, titanium oxide makes them sapphire-blue. Color is unimportant in industrial jewels except as it makes them easier to see, cut, assemble.

The powdery oxide is sifted slowly down into a flame formed by the union of the two gases. (An oxyacetylene flame is much too hot.) The powder drops and melts on the tip of a slowly moving stick. There, drop by drop, a single large crystal is formed. It is called a boule. Two hours are required to form a 200-karat boule the size & shape of a large bullet.

Simple in principle, this process is maddeningly tricky to control. Biggest problems are maintaining: 1) absolute purity of the powder; 2) its even flow to the flame; 3) a constant temperature. For over a year Union's scientists fussed and fretted until a steady output of boules was achieved last month. This week Union is turning out all the boules the U.S. needs, thinks it can meet the rising demand singlehanded, although several other firms are now preparing to enter the field.

Apprentices Wanted. The uncut boules are shipped to U.S. jewelers to be split, sawed, cut, drilled, polished for use as bearings. This stage remains a serious bottleneck. Reason: jewel cutting in the U.S. involves more handwork than in Europe, where it is a highly mechanized art. So far the best apprentice jewel cutters have been nimble-fingered seamstresses. Grumbled a master jewel cutter last week: "We have been called upon to do a staggering job without having time to develop the machine methods it took the Swiss 100 years to develop."

* Weight of the average engagement-ring diamond: one-half to one-fourth karat.

* Natural and synthetic stones are chemically identical. Differences can be detected only with a microscope. If anything, the synthetics are a little better, since they contain fewer flaws.

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