How to Indentify Rough Gem Stones
While you're taking a walk through the wilderness, you come across some interesting looking stones. You think they might be of value, but you have no way of identifying them. There are a few things you can do to identify rough gem stones without the incorporation of highly technical equipment.
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Instructions
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Familiarize yourself with the Mohs hardness scale. You can find this scale in any mineralogy book or on the web. It is constructed of 10 different levels for classifying minerals by hardness.
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Make a hardness tester. Go to the mineralogy shop and ask for a sample of each gem on the Mohs hardness scale. Make sure to remember which one represents each level of hardness (some people mark them with the number). Take each sample and place them in a pouch.
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Test the rough gem stone's hardness. Place the encountered gem stone in water and move to the sunlight. Take out your hardest mineral from the pouch and try to scratch the stone you are testing. If it leaves a well-defined scratch, then it does not belong to that category. Successively take out lower numbered minerals from the pouch and perform the same test until there is no scratch.
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Identify the class. Once you have a stone of equal harness, match the tested stone against the pouch stone, and you have found the class. For example, if it doesn't leave a scratch at Orthoclase, then you have found an Orthoclase, a No. 6 on the Mohs scale.
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Perform a color test. Now take out your gemstone book and look up the color characteristics for Orthoclase. For example, if your stone exhibits vibrant iridescence, then you have most probably found a Labradorite, which is well worth keeping.
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Tips & Warnings
You may only want to get the first nine stones on the Mohs hardness scale because diamonds in the rough might be a little too expensive if you are only in this for fun.
Be careful when picking through rough gem stones. Black widows love to chill out between the rocks. The best way to avoid being bitten by an insect is to wear thick gloves.
References
- Photo Credit mondominerals.com/images/Mineralogy_Fig3Neutral.jpg
