This week's work

[chromenut]

I bought exactly double what is shown in the picture below, already shaped but not polished, so a little grinding and a lot of polishing and half the group is ready to start making jewelry. Most are pendants, many are pendant and earring sets that I've tried to match up. Much of this is my favorite stone, Charoite. Hope you like....



Now gotta finish up the other half and then start the creative process of hanging bails and so on. Still not yet figured out what I want to do but going to be different, I hope. No, except for teh bloodstone none of this is thick enough to wrap, and the two bloodstone pieces I may just try wrapping them. We'll see, this will probably take me most of this coming week to complete. Wish me luck!

[chromenut]

I just noticed I put Painted Jasper, I think that's supposed to be picture Jasper??? Not sure, going to have to look that one up again....

[adrian65]

Beautiful cabs. I might be wrong, but looking at the pics, I think the "charoite" might be in fact sugilite and the "bloodstone" is turquoise.

Adrian

[Jack ( Yorkshire)]

the Malakite is a beautifull stone and shape great work
Jacj
Yorkshire uk

[tanyafrench]

Those will make beautiful sets. Great design and execution.

Tanya

[drocknut]

Those are so beautiful. My favorite is the bottom Charoite set.

[Toad]

Great batch of work

[Donnie's Rocky Treasures]

Those are all beautiful. I really like the charoite!

[RocknCritter]

That's certainly a nice set of cabs. I love the different shapes. hope it's o.k. to correct the i.d.

Bloodstone=>Turquoise

Charoite=>Eudialyte or Sugilite

[chromenut]

Never seen turquoise with blood red veins before.

As to the Charoite, well all three suggestions are around the same mohs, with Eudialyte the softer and Sugilite the harder, but all three very close. The problem is that, from a photo, this could well be Sugilite, however Sugilite doesn't have the chatoyance that Charoite does. These stones all have some serious depth to them, and the lighter purple veins you see in the photos are not surface veins, they are deep in the stone and visible through the chatoyant layers. Again, all three look very close, until you hold the Charoite in your hand and see the depth of the veins and the chatoyancy of the stone. Lovely pearlescence too.

Now if I go by color, this really does look more like Sugilite to me. Most of the cabs I've seen of Charoite were a lighter, almost feathery looking purple. The Eudialyte to me is more of a cranberry color than a real purple, at least from the few stones I've seen. Might have to get these checked out as I am kind of leaning towards Sugilite, but never seen Sugi with that much chatoyance.

Last thing though, of all of them, the only one I've ever seen with these cool sort of olive green veins like what are in my stones is Charoite. Never seen anything like that in Sugi, and Euda has some gray that might go towards green but not ever seen anything like whats in my cabs. Anyway, good discussion all around, makes me wonder what they really are! lol

[chromenut]

Dropped them under a microscope to get a closer look at them, don't have any Euda or Sugi to compare to but did have bloodstone vs. turquoise.

Here's the one I think is Charoite, you can see the chatoyant layer very well under the mic:



Another piece, wanted two that looked somewhat different:



Now the "bloodstone vs. turquoise":

bloodstone first -


Now a piece of turquise rough that I have from Bisbee, AZ -

[Tonyterner]

I can certainly see the flash in the layers in the micro pics. Never seen that in sugilite but eudalite might have that. I've never seen brown in any charoite so I don't think its that. I think the bloodstone is turquoise too. The red part is cuprite, another copper mineral.

[chromenut]

I'm going to change it's name to "Purple Stone"...lmao... whatever it is, it sure is purdy!

Tony, does turquoise come in that dark of a green? All mine is from AZ and bright, bright blue. I've had one piece that was more green than blue but not this dark. Either way they are gorgeous!

[Tonyterner]

I'm not really sure what colors turquoise comes in but I know that green is one of them. Then there are the dyed varieties which come in every color under the sun, but they don't count.

[RocknCritter]

Turquoise can range in color from blue to green to a green-ish yellow. With a red matrix, it's known as red skin turquoise. Here's a link for a source. www.turquoiserough.com/rough_red_skin_turquoise.shtml

Of course one of the most popular turquoise is the stuff with the black matrix and spiderweb veins.

Most of the time bloodstone (heliotrope) looks like this

cgi.ebay.com/bloodstone-stone-crystal-healing-GIANT-POLISHED-SWEET-/260691850787?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3cb271f623#ht_929wt_698

or this

cgi.ebay.com/orbicular-FANCY-BLOODSTONE-JASPER-lapidary-cab-rough-T-/270661283157?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3f04ab6d55#ht_2552wt_932

*That's not to say that the name "bloodstone" has been given to another jasper, etc. I've seen three very different stones given the name 'kaleidoscope jasper" this year!*

You should be jumping up and down. Not only are these a great set of cabs with regards to the cut, turquoise is generally much more valuable than bloodstone

It's really hard to tell from the pixs what the other material (i.e. "charoite") is. Maybe it's not charoite, sugilite or eudialyte It almost looks like a red fuchsite (muscovite)..........

The Chromenut cab mystery continues!

[chromenut]

Should change the name of this thread to that, quite catchy. I'm at least having fun researching all the suggestions you guys are offering. I'm 100% convinced now that the "bloodstone" is Turquoise, I bought some other bloodstone and looks exactly like the first one you show in your comments above. Still have yet to find anything that closely matches the lustre, chatoyance, and sheer beauty of the "charoite", but having fun looking for it!

[RocknCritter]

If it's truly chatoyant, then that probably eliminates sugilite and eudialyte since neither of these normally have this characteristic. The stones with chatoyance I know include Amazonite, Charoite, coral, corundum, obsidian, serpentine, serafinite, Smithsonite, tourmaline and wavellite. For some reason I'm still leaning towards red muscovite.

[chromenut]

The color of the stones is a grapey purple like a grape popsicle with some variegated green through it, and that green runs from olive to a deep hunter. The stones appear 'flat' in photos, but in your hand show amazing depth. I bought like 50 preforms and finished cabs all from the same vein, all absolutely magnificent. They all came out of Russia where I met a fellow mega-rockhound about a year ago and have bought lots and lots of very interesting stones from him since. He swears they are charoite, me, I don't care they are just about one of the loveliest stones I've ever had the pleasure of owning.

As to finishing them, they are not the hardest stone but not the softest either, I think they are around 6 on the mohs scale but not sure. That makes them just perfect for me, and so far, knock on wood, I've not had a bad one turn out yet.