Applying to join this forum, you HAVE to activate your membership in YOUR email in the notice you recieve after completing application process. No activation on your part, no membership.

Lapidaryforum.net

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

News:

Welcome new members & old from the Lapidary/Gemstone Community Forum. Please join up. You will be approved after spam check & you must manually activate your acct with the link in your email

Congratulations to Bobby1 and his Brazilian Agate Cab!

 www.lapidaryforum.net

Another cabochon contest coming soon!

Pages: [1]   Go Down

Author Topic: Zig-zag pattern in agate - how to cut them?  (Read 1353 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

R.U. Sirius

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 283
  • asleep at the grinding wheel
Zig-zag pattern in agate - how to cut them?
« on: July 02, 2020, 01:00:22 PM »

This fist-sized (crazy-lace?) agate rough displays an interesting zig-zag pattern all around the perimeter. The obvious approach would be to then slab parallel to one of the exposed faces, hoping to capture similar patterns.

I am curious if anyone here could help me guess on what would happen if I cut across and through the pattern - would I end up with orbs? Or are these bands more accordion-like?
Logged

lithicbeads

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 3214
Re: Zig-zag pattern in agate - how to cut them?
« Reply #1 on: July 02, 2020, 05:26:54 PM »

No orbs unfortunately just the small line like top of spikes. Blue malawi agate which has lots of smoothly undulating white lines will cut diffuse looking orbs when cut perpendicular to the lines. Orbs in agate have  been sought for millennia , they were favored in the very prolific Indus civilization and the Tibetans valued those orbed Indus beads greatly.
Logged

R.U. Sirius

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 283
  • asleep at the grinding wheel
Re: Zig-zag pattern in agate - how to cut them?
« Reply #2 on: July 02, 2020, 06:31:03 PM »

Orbs in agate have  been sought for millennia , they were favored in the very prolific Indus civilization and the Tibetans valued those orbed Indus beads greatly.

Would an example be the small orbs we could get by cutting a tube agate perpendicular to the tubes?
Logged

irockhound

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1467
    • RockhoundingUSA
Re: Zig-zag pattern in agate - how to cut them?
« Reply #3 on: July 02, 2020, 07:39:18 PM »

If you cut horizontally through the tops of the Dog tooth Psuedomorphs in the crazy lace you will get patterns like in the first picture here.  Of course how good the patterns will be depends on the banding colors and it there is good contrast or if you have a lot of clear it may not look that great.  The 2nd pic is of some nice crazy lace that formed Botryoidal nodes which when you cut Horizontally you would get the nice spherule shapes however even in this material the "bots" may only be towards the outer surface so as you cut deeper you may not get the same spherule pattern, It might only supply 1 or 2 slabs of the outter rind in that pattern, you just never know
Logged
Pages: [1]   Go Up
 

Page created in 0.092 seconds with 34 queries.