Thread: natural beryl?Any idea what is it?

natural beryl stone. has anyone own one, or tired?Natural Beryl Polishing Stone Graver Sharpening Tool - eBay (item 110464215713 end time Dec-30-09 06:26:54 PST)

Sham I think TheBigSpendur has one.
This one is exceptionally pretty though.
Its a very fine and hard Quartz.
Probably similar in effect to your jasper.

Yes I have one. Pretty green stuff, Beryllium Aluminum Silicate. There's a picture of it around here somewhere. Its very hard, much harder than quartz. The problem with the piece I have is its very odd shaped and as I ground it down I kept uncovering tiny vugs with Beryl xtls in them. Not good for honing. However from what I was able to learn it has honing potential as a very high grit honing medium.

Originally Posted by hi_bud_gl

natural beryl stone. has anyone own one, or tired?Natural Beryl Polishing Stone Graver Sharpening Tool - eBay (item 110464215713 end time Dec-30-09 06:26:54 PST)

I suspect the "beryl" is a reference to the color not the
mineralogy of the material. If it is a clean solid anything
with a nice smooth grain it may be a fine polisher no matter
what a mineralogist might say.

I do not think it is jade or jadite which would be "Bonus".

For the price you should know more... IMO.

ho ho ho! I have nothing to contribute here, but I am waiting to see if you give in and buy this stone.

You are thinking hard about this stone, aren't you Sham? It looks like low grade jade to me, but it might be worth the price if it was a great finisher.

Now Joe! Why do you tease him this way? You know he cant help himself!

A little exerpt from Wikipedia

The mineral beryl is a beryllium aluminium cyclosilicate with the chemical formula Be3Al2(SiO3)6. The hexagonal crystals of beryl may be very small or range to several meters in size. Terminated crystals are relatively rare. Pure beryl is colorless, but it is frequently tinted by impurities; possible colors are green, blue, yellow, red, and white.

There is no mention of the smallest size particle measured, but the Moh hardness number is 7.5-8, for refernece diamond is 10, knife steel is 5.5 (although carbon steel is 6-7). the shape of the crystals gives an idea what kind of finish you will get, similar to Diamond spray.

Emerald, aquamarine are all gem varieties of beryl. The stuff is massive and usually mined in Pegmatite Quarries. There are no xtls in the massive stuff like say a coticule which has tiny garnets or diamond which has tiny diamond xtls unless you go down to the molecular level of course.

If you go to some of the inactive mines like the Strickland Quarry in Connecticut or the Dixon pegmatites in New Mexico you can pick the stuff up by the truckloads. You will rarely find complete xtls and like the chunk I have you will come across cavities with xtls in them however its not the xtls that do the polishing work its just a very hard rock.

For those who are interested, here is a picture of the rock hi_bud_gl linked to in the first post

Thanks to on line dictionaries I now know what xtls and vugs are.

For 250 $$ you can buy a vintage Escher or a beryl hone. I'll stick to the former for my honing.