Charoite's mineral collecting chat.

Mott the Hoople said:
Same as you would with a natural Ruby. You polish it with diamond grit.

More than likely it wouldn’t be gem grade from a garage lab set up but Rubies are really just a purer form of corundum which makes an excellent abrasive product.
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They are also basically worthless as far as gems go.
 
Charoite said:
You'll never get obsidian though. Obsidian you can only get from lava as the mineral composition, viscosity, and rapid cooling inhibit structuring of crystals. Obsidian barely has a crystalline structure and it won't have air bubbles. Probably some of the sharpest natural material that's been used in hunting since way back.
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Trust me, you can duplicate those conditions in the laboratory and produce obsidian. You just need to mix the proper ratios of Si, Al, Ca, Na, K and iron. It will melt and react at around the same temperature as glass, a little lower actually and the Iron acts as a very powerful flux will have a significantly lower melt viscosity. Then allow enough residence time for off gassing to complete to eliminate bubbles the cool it quickly to below nucleation temperature. Then anneal for a set amount of time below nucleation temp to eliminate stress risers in the materials matrix then allow to cool and you’ll have a workable piece of obsidian.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
Trust me, you can duplicate those conditions in the laboratory and produce obsidian. You just need to mix the proper ratios of Si, Al, Ca, Na, K and iron. It will melt and react at around the same temperature as glass, a little lower actually and the Iron acts as a very powerful flux will have a significantly lower melt viscosity. Then allow enough residence time for off gassing to complete to eliminate bubbles the cool it quickly to below nucleation temperature. Then anneal for a set amount of time below nucleation temp to eliminate stress risers in the materials matrix then allow to cool and you’ll have a workable piece of obsidian.
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You can make the composition all you want but it won't be formed the same way and won't have the same structure. You simply can't mimic natures fast cooling on a flow of lava. There will always be a major difference and that tell.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
Yup, you would. Slag has far more calcium but obtaining the correct chemical composition is easy.

Rapidly cooling it so crystal nucleation centers don’t form but that not so fast that it becomes to amorphous and shatters. You can probably determine an appropriate anealling temp via reference literature.
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Would you like to be on our team when the apocalypse comes? Imagine not having to trade to the other tribes for the Black Stone That Sharpens. We can keep more of our RW slaves! lol
 
Charoite said:
You can make the composition all you want but it won't be formed the same way and won't have the same structure. You simply can't mimic natures fast cooling on a flow of lava. There will always be a major difference and that tell.
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Sure you can. I’ve done it. I spent years recycling inorganic hazardous waste produced in steel manufacturing. I even spent 2.5 years doing research on that area at one of the top Materials Science programs in the country.

One of the products that I developed from EAF dust from electric arc furnaces used synthetic obsidian and Franklinite as a baseline. I made those materials in the laboratory and it was identical to obsidian. Right down to it’s chemistry and crystalline and non crystalline structure which I identified via SEM/EDS and confirmed by XRD analysis. It also had an identical Vickers hardness, identical cleavage points, the same fracture toughness, etc,. It even had the same RI when polished and measured using polarized light microscopy.

The difficulty in doing so wasn’t what you mentioned. It was preventing the growth of spinel inclusions within the matrix due to chromium and zinc contamination which can be eliminated or substantially reduced by temperature control or using reagent grade chemicals (I was using heterogeneous waste materials). It was also a bit of a nonsequiter as natural obsidian also contains some spinel inclusions in its matrix.

Keep in mind that obsidian is a fairly simple matrix to create as it’s just really a solid solution of glass and iron and duplicating the obsidian matrix from that solid solution is simply a matter of managing the heat treatment to duplicate the crystalline phase of the obsidian matrix.
 
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Charoite said:
Would it be anywhere near as fun without the beer? :guin:
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Oh it’s vastly more fun to do without the beer and a real lab with the right equipment, particularly furnaces, to work with but it certainly was a lot of fun to duplicate the process using equipment my brother in law and I jury rigged in his shop.
 
ThatOwlWoman said:
Would you like to be on our team when the apocalypse comes? Imagine not having to trade to the other tribes for the Black Stone That Sharpens. We can keep more of our RW slaves! lol
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LOL if you have the technology to create synthetic obsidian you would have the technology to make far more useful materials than obsidian.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
You know with some basic lab equipment you can create quite a few of these minerals in a garage lab. An understanding of the industrial processes and the chemistry involved doesn’t hurt either.

Obsidian would be easy to make. Once you make it you can easily convert it to Franklinite by heat treating it.

I’ve made synthetic rubies from beer cans. That was kind of fun as the first step of the two step process is a reverse Bayor Process. Had a lot of fun. It started with my machinist brother in law asking me if it was possible to make rubies from beer cans. I told him I’d look into it. Next time I saw him I told him it was possible. So after drinking some inspiration we picked up some chemicals we needed from the hard ware store. Then we picked up some graphite welding rods at local welding shop and before the day was done and fueled by beer by golly we did it.
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For intangible and aesthetic reasons, I like knowing that natural obsidian comes from real volcanoes, natural diamonds are a piece of the earth's mantle, and natural iron meteorites are a piece of the core of an ancient planetesimal.

Creating chemical equivalents in the lab just is not the same for me.
 
Charoite said:
Since the election madness ended and many showed interest in this reprieve topic, I decided to continue it here.
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Do you drill holes in rocks or glass? My wife wants to set up a rig for cutting holes in glass for stained-glass projects. She has a dremel, but a stand would be better. I'm also thinking maybe just a small tabletop drill press would work.

Any ideas? Recommendations?
 
Dutch Uncle said:
Do you drill holes in rocks or glass? My wife wants to set up a rig for cutting holes in glass for stained-glass projects. She has a dremel, but a stand would be better. I'm also thinking maybe just a small tabletop drill press would work.

Any ideas? Recommendations?
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I believe you need a special bit for and prep for glass but I'm no expert on glass. I'm pretty sure you need to use something to make sure the glass doesn't break under pressure just like the reasoning behind tile saws.
 
Dutch Uncle said:
Do you drill holes in rocks or glass? My wife wants to set up a rig for cutting holes in glass for stained-glass projects. She has a dremel, but a stand would be better. I'm also thinking maybe just a small tabletop drill press would work.

Any ideas? Recommendations?
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Yea you can drill more precise holes in glass with a bench scale sandblasted.
 
Cypress said:
For intangible and aesthetic reasons, I like knowing that natural obsidian comes from real volcanoes, natural diamonds are a piece of the earth's mantle, and natural iron meteorites are a piece of the core of an ancient planetesimal.

Creating chemical equivalents in the lab just is not the same for me.
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In terms of the end product I can understand that though with some, like gem grade synthetic rubies, depending on the process used are of superior quality and lower cost than natural rubies.

Which really isn’t my point. I’m just saying creating them in a lab, even a garage lab, is fun to do.
 
Some new acquisitions after getting my check.

Moss Agate rough 1lb 5.7oz

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