Joined: Tue Aug 01, 2006 3:24 am Posts: 4997 Location: McDonough GA
I bought one of those giant Citrines on ebay because I thought it would make a neat paperweight. Advertised as natural I just assumed it was hydrothermal. It's 253 carats and DOES make a nice paperweight. However, I noticed when I tilt the stone at an angle i can see what appears to be a veil that crosses the entire stone in a single plane. With a loupe at 10x it appears to be composed of tiny particles and some interesting lines. I'm sure all this is old hat to most of you but I really dont know that much about the quartz family. Can someone tell me what I might be seeing? I'd take a pic but I dont have a microscope and my camera doesnt pic up the inclusion in question.
Joined: Tue Aug 01, 2006 3:24 am Posts: 4997 Location: McDonough GA
Yep, it sure does. It appears what I am seeing is a breadcrumb plain. I suspected these were breadcrumb inclusions but I didn't know they sometimes occurred in plains.
I purchased this fine ,,, nearly flawless,--> 42 ct <--, Brazilian Citrine, with excellent color, and it was NOT heated! (It said so right in the description.)
I got this from a fine Thai dealer on E-Bay for only $50 a ct. and just because of a few "crummy" almost microscopic inclusions you are going to try and convince me it's not the "real McCoy!"
Oh, sorry about that, decimal in wrong place ... that should read $0.50 per ct. (50 cents per ct) ... guess I won't get rich quick after all ... darn!
Anyway here are the "crummy" inclusions and some etched growth triangles.
Joined: Sun Jan 13, 2008 10:10 am Posts: 310 Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Very nice pics!
I have a 30ct fancy cut vivid yellow Citrine (of course hydrothermal, bought it for 40 cents a carat) with a plane looking exactly as your last pic, only a couple of mm under the table!
Perhaps the triangels are even more distinct in the plane of my stone, and I was thinking it was quite weird. I had never seen such triangels in any other stone before...
Actually the triangles a very distinct on mine too, but the plane is diving into the pavilion of the stone. I don't have a pair of gem tweezers large enough to hold the stone and change the angle so I am shooting as it dives away.
Here is a piece of hydrothermal Russian Citrine, the top arrow shows the metal attachment of the seed plate, the clear stripe is the seed plate, and the second arrow shows some interesting crystal growths along the edge.
The second image show typical surface growth for this material with many raised (somewhat barnacle like) ridges.
Finally here is a synthetic amethyst crystal (origin unknown) that shows similar angular pitted external features. Somewhat more like the pits in the bread-crumb planes.
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