When I read your post I clicked on the link expecting to see the typical East African material that starts out opaque and after the Indians finish with it, red oil and so forth ends up semi-translucent. A friend in Nairobi once should me 150 kilos of the stuff. Sold it to the Indians for $165.00 per kilo and they turned it into $0..50 per carat. Do the math, some rich Brahmins!
This is a bit different. Stuff I saw did not have such well defined hexangonal crystal shape. If processed in India, almost a certainty, filled with oil but, that said. I would have been interested in a 10-20mm crystal uncut. Not a denizen of the bead world but the stuff looks interesting fro a design point of view and it is "ruby".
Ha! Thanks, Richard, for the little glimpse into gem bead pricing.
I guess what I dislike about these beads is that they seem a waste of some nifty crystals. At first sight, they look to me more like little slices of giblets. And the bead holes are 'way too distracting and obvious. Whereas the rough might have been much more interesting and fun to wear as pendants...or maybe they'd still resemble chicken hearts (or something even more disturbingly organic), I don't know
Joined: Thu Jan 26, 2006 5:50 am Posts: 163 Location: Shandong, China
We got some big sizes African ruby roughs in a similar color but looked more translucent. I burnt some in the electric oven heating up to 1700 C and the colors dried up and shows a whitish lifeless color.
When I put the rough rubies in my hand, I can feel it's sticky and think it's oil treated like what Richard said.
We cut a few pieces oiled ruby and the color looks promising. Seems the cutting and polishing doesn't interfere with the oil treatment.
The ruby roughs are from a friend and he wanted our cutters to cut a few pieces for him but I told him they might have been oil treated but just not sure.
Joined: Thu Jan 26, 2006 5:50 am Posts: 163 Location: Shandong, China
Sorry for the confusion. The roughs were heated in the oven but the cut stones we cut from rough that were not heated. But I think the roughs were treated with oil or something else to improve on color as they are very sticky when holding in the hands.
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