I read that the emerald is soft and must be left to dry in the air before it can be used. The same text said that Europe was flooded with these stones from the Americas. They also melted them down to make a green glass. Some of the green disappeared in the heating and they figured that an organic molecule was burned out. The conclusion was the crystal had some green and an organic component made it a darker green. Are there other gems that are soft when dug up?
I don’t know what you’ve been reading, but, emeralds are a crystal. They are not soft when mined.
Soft when compared to diamonds yes.
They art the softest jewel. But they do not need to be air dried.
The opal, on the other hand, is quite soft for its entire life. The colour can also quite easily be leached out in water.
Not even the softest jewel. Emeralds are green beryl, with a hardness of 7.5 to 8 on the Mohs scale. Of the other precious stones, Diamonds are 10, Ruby and Sapphire are corundum at 9, Aquamarine is also beryl at 7.5-8. Topaz is of similar hardness, I believe slightly softer.) The semiprecious stones are softer yet. Emeralds (and aquamarines) are, however, brittle by comparison to the other gemstones.
Don’t you think calling aquamarine and topaz precious stones is stretching it a bit?
I guess I should have called emerald a precious stone instead of just a jewel.
My bad.
I’d learned that the precious stones are diamond, ruby, sapphire and emerald. But two different online references included aquamarine and topaz as precious rather than semi-precious like garnet and peridot. So I posted accordingly. I will concede it’s the softest of the four “classical” precious stones, though Mohs 8 is plenty hard enough for any reasonable discussion.
This sounds like the old legend that bears are born shapeless and are then licked into shape by their mother. In other words, an old wives’ tale. Emeralds are crystals. They’re as rigid as they’re going to get well before anyone sticks a mining pick into their matrix.
Good grief, it actually said all that? Can you tell us what you were reading?
I don’t know where I read it anymore. I read it this summer. It was in a novel or web page the talked of mining the emerald in the Andies. The author stated that the emeralds were soft and had to sit in the air for a couple days or they would break. This board was my proving ground for the information. You know how unreliable information is on the internet today. Thanks for the replies people.
Nobody needs to post about the internet and it’s tons of worthless crap, I tried to discuss that earlier on the board and two people had to be asses. I see the same two doing it to other people all the time too.
Anybody have information about the making of a vases and such with emeralds as the substance after melting down. Its the second part of the question I hoped would be answered.
While theoretically you could melt an emerald, I suspect that you personally would not be able to reach such a heat. According to this website the melting point of beryl is 2349° F–so quite hot.
Simply, all information you read was wrong.
Well thank you Sage rat. I sounded like they where talking about rich Europeans that had done this, but I don’t think there’s much chance they did it.
Lurking at the bottom of this sorry tale are a couple of grains of grievously abused truth, here they are:
-Emeralds are brittle and prone to breakage; the octagonal ‘emerald cut’ is designed to offer some protection from accidental breakage.
-Aquamarines (another form of the same mineral) and other beryls are sometimes heat-treated to enhance their colour.
Nope. I just did some google runs on your keywords, thinking that maybe you misremembered the substance as “emerald” when in fact it was something else–but nothing came up. It strikes me as doubtful that someone would come up with something so detailed and yet wholely a lie, so you might want to try and remember where you found this information as it isn’t necessarily wrong–just attached to the wrong material.
Precious and semi-precious stones don’t have specific standards. Same site as PDF. Its easier to read if you have the speed
Clicked submit too soon. Here is a site describing the Mohs hardness scale
It’s all utter tosh, but might be repeating what was believed in some less educated time. Weird ideas like this were not uncommon because of the far-off near-mythical origin of many of these stones.
I remember reading a history of diamonds which described some of the bizarro beliefs that people had in the old days. F’rinstance, that diamonds were so hard that if you put one on an anvil and smacked it hard with a hammer, the hammer or anvil or both would shatter but the diamond would be intact. :dubious:
Many many fine diamonds perished at the hands of ignorant soliders and such as a result. The inaccuracies were often promulgated by dishonest traders.
“How much is this huge diamond I looted from a dead Maharajah worth?”
“It’s not a diamond - let me prove it” [smash]
“Aw shucks, never mind”
[gathers fragments to recut] “chortle”