Inspecting Gemstones

[Tim207]

hi to all you experts, great reading,, thank you,

ive been working in scotland, still am, and ive bought my wife a beautiful tanzanite ring to bring home with me,

they say its rarer then diamonds is there any truth in this? dosnt matter as it is very beautiful

thank you jake

Truth be told, diamonds are not all that rare so yes, it is probably a lot rarer than diamond. If there wasn't a cartel controlling much of the diamond production diamonds would be a lot cheaper.

Tanzanite is a blue/purple variety of zoisite and I believe it has only been found in one area of Tanzania. I like the look, just keep in mind that it is relatively soft so prone to scratching. I would recommend googling how to care for tanzanite so that you keep your ring looking beautiful.

[pigeonjake]

thank you tim,

will do mate,, like you say it is a beautiful colour,

and yes i was told when i bought it can only be found in tanzanier hence the name, at the foot of a mountain or so the story goes, ive been looking on google about it, wasnt found long ago,

thanks again jake

[rak sa_ngop]

Pigeonjake

According to my notes Zoisite is trichroic in its natural form and dichroic in it heat treated form. This means different refractive indexes in 3 directions or 2 directions (heat treated). Each direction has different absorption characteristics so will show different colours.

Not sure how easy it is to see these maybe slight colour differences without a dichroscope. Maybe you can use the Hodgkinson technique and see some colour spectrum overlaps. However I have just read that this stone has low dispersion so maybe difficult to see a spectrum of colours.

Or shine a bright white light into the stone from different directions and look for subtle? colour differences.

I have a sample of Iolite rough stone otherwise known as Viking stone. Used by the vikings for navigation due to its polarising properties. This stone is also trichroic and when I shine a strong white light into it from different directions I can see colour changes from white to blue to yellow.