Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[jemcbonita]

I am new to gemology and need help identifying this mysterious stone bead. It has numerous inclusions, liquid, crystals plus others that I do not know. I have limited experience in gemmology and just started the basic. Spectroscope, chelsea filter, polariscope, refractometer. It is doubly refractive. 
Prism Spectroscope: Absorbed red down to just below 650 at the z axis and just slightly above 650 at the y. Didn't see much change in the other colors a very slight gray band in the yellow green area, hardly noticeable. I apologize for my lack of knowledge.
Couldn't get a refractive index due to being  a bead.  It is I intend to get this faceted soon so I can take better readings.
The stone is very beautiful. It looks light greenish blue under regular light, more blue in daylight and light neonish blue with a violet hue under florescent.
 It really depends on how the stone is held to get full effect. It appears clear when viewing from the side and more saturated when looking from top long view at an angle. So it appears to have pleochroism, stones are very light color anyway so hard to distinguish. 
Dichroscope did not show dramatic change and difficult to determine. It appears light blue and light violet blue, very weak though.
Presidium gemtester (don't know if this is helpful much) reads in the emerald, aquamarine, quartz range.
It has wispy coloring that looks like dye but upon further inspection the stone does not appear to be. No surface dye coloring detected on surface or cracks. I also noticed that not all coloring reaches the surface of the stone. The Coloring appears to be coming from within the stone moving out towards the surface. It does have some surface fissures but no dye in them and do not look like crackled heated  dye treatment to me. So without proper testing equipment, I decided to do a potentially destructive test on a small bead:
Acetone soak for 1 week = no change.
Soaked in 18K gold testing HCA acid for 6 hours= no change (so it's not Apatite)
Soaked MEK (polymer dissolving chemical) for 1 hour = no change.

For me, it is a very unusual stone and at first glance is deceiving. It needs to be looked at forensically.
I really enjoy looking at the stone and I can't seem to take my loupe off it.  There's so much going on inside the stone, it looks like a miniature universe inside! I have included a link to photobucket to view pics. Any suggestions as to the id of the stone is greatly appreciated. Sorry Photobucket is very slow.

http://s1202.photobucket.com/user/emylistings/slideshow/Gemstones

The picture attached is showing stones half under incandescent (right) and the other stone under a LED Pen light. The stone under incandescent actually looks more light bluish green and not so dark muddy green as shown. The change is not as dramatic as the picture. Please the my photo-bucket pictures of the stones under natural daylight and under LED penlight are closer to the color.  It's cool how the stone comes to life with just a little LED light.

Thanks for the help!

[lithicbeads]

This forum may not be the best place for this question. Bead Collectors Network may be better. Iding things from internet pictures is a rats nest as in the end the eye is the determinant. Tremendous amounts of heavily manipulated beads are being produced today and the techniques used are often sophisticated despite the moderate or low price of the finished object. This could be a shocked quartz . Shocked quartz is heated and suddenly colled to produce stress lines in the stone.Cryogenics are commonly used on certain bead types in China as an artificial aging treatment and I imagine they try other stones not just certain agates.

[jemcbonita]

Thanks for the suggestion. I know its a bead, however, the inclusions are very interesting in this stone, I have never seen before.  I thought maybe some rock-hound might be able to identify it from the inclusions. The inclusions in the stone is mesmerizing. I wish the pictures could show them better.
 I haven't thoroughly researched shocked quartz, but from what I have found the shocking generally produces lots of rainbow flashes which can destroy or show obvious signs of damage inside the stone & inclusions. This stone has zero damage to any of the inclusions except the drill hole. The age of the bead is unknown, I believe it was from the 70's. It is obvious whoever turned this beautiful stone into a bead must of thought it wasn't worth much. I don't think any modern technology can produce this type of affect. I plan on getting this cut in half. Half faceted to Gemstone cut and cabochon the other, so i can still admire the stone with my loupe and have it tested. 

[Ranger_Dave]

Are you sure it's a natural stone and not glass?

[jemcbonita]

Hi, yes I am certain it is not glass. There are no air bubbles, the bubble like inclusions in the picture are flat. Also there are tiny crystals in it. Definitely not glass.

[55fossil]

   Since you plan on cutting this stone why not try a hardness test on one area. You state you are a beginner but follow that with many definitive statements about the stone.  I am not saying you are not correct but even advanced gemologists get fooled on occasion. With the number of faked and treated stones in the market today you need to keep an open mind to the fact it may be faked and or treated.  I am hoping for the best.

[jemcbonita]

Hi, Yes, that is true, there are so many fakes out there, good to be cautious, but still fun trying to figure it out.  It scratches around 7 moh's.

[vitzitziltecpatl]

Interesting. Is it large enough you could get a reasonably accurate specific gravity?

My inclination would be to guess Zircon, but I'm not a GG or anything - only a rockhead. Just ask my wife...!

Good luck with your quest for an ID.

[lithicbeads]

A geologist I know started a company years ago to vapor glaze finished stones . Most of them had a very thin ( a fe atoms ) layer of gold on them. He later branched out into coating crystals ( quartz) with various colored translucent metal coating. The pink was especially horrible. This could be gold vapor glaze over glass or shocked quartz. You can manipulate the sg of glass very easily and lead would make the glass shinier. You can't buy lead glass here but it is easily available in places.

[vitzitziltecpatl]

A product like that would be a good candidate for beads like the one shown. Much more likely for beads than any gemstone rough. Even lower grade rough would probably be a lot more costly for bead making.

Good thought, and the internals look a lot like some of the quartz varieties we have here. Hardness is same too.