How to Decide Which Quartz Rocks to Trim & Clean
Quartz is one of the most popular crystals among collectors. It is one of the most abundant minerals in the crust of the Earth and has many varieties including the clear rock crystal, purple amethyst, brown citrine, white milky quartz, pink rose quartz and numerous microcrystalline varieties. A good rock crystal specimen makes a nice additional to any collection if the shape and color of the crystal is well formed.
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Instructions
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Remove thick layers rock and soil particles from the quartz using a hammer, chisel and brush so that you can view the crystal adequately during your examination.
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Evaluate the shape of the crystal. A good quality quartz crystal should have a shape of a hexagonal prism in the center that has six-sided pyramids on each end of the prism. Perfect crystals are not very common; however, you should choose crystals for your collection that have at least one pyramid on the end of a prism.
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Inspect the color of the crystals. Clear rock crystal quartz should have no large inclusions, which are defects in the mineral. The inclusions often appear as a dark smudge in the otherwise clear crystal. A couple of exceptions are rutilated quartz and tourmalinated quartz. These quartz crystals have interior growths of the minerals rutile and tourmaline that appear as red, brown or black threads in the quartz and do not appear as smudges.
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Choose specimens to clean and trim for your collection based on their perfect or near perfect crystal form and their clear quality.
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Tips & Warnings
Quality samples of other varieties of quartz, such as amethyst and citrine, will show good quartz crystal shape and even color throughout the specimen.
Choose quartz specimens that you like, even if they do not have perfect shape or color. Part of the interest of minerals collecting is that no two minerals are exactly alike.
References
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