I have a mine in Brithish Columbia Canada that we have discovered
serpentine. We took samples to the University of BC and had it
analyzed and it came back as actinolite with a hardness of 5 thru 6.5
and some even harder. Can anyone tell me where my market would be for
this product.
Jewelry and rock hounds/collectors. Do a web search for lapidary
rough you will probably get about 86000 hits. Just start working your
way down the list. As you originally thought it to be serpentine,
that says a lot about the color, and the actinolite ID would indicate
that it is fibrous.
If you would, take pictures and send it to my email, I am in the
market for some.
It depends on the quality and color. I just cut a bunch of serpentine
from Utah and it was crumby with only 25% usable for cabs. Serpentine
is great for sphere making and carving. It’s not too early to think
about Tucson and/or Quartzite next year. That would be a good place
to see what interest there is. If you have a lot you could ship it to
China, have spheres and carvings made from it, then sell it in North
America and worldwide. Just some ideas off the top of my head. I have
no idea of the logistics involved.
Rick Copeland
Silversmith and Lapidary Artisan
Rocky Mountain Wonders
Colorado Springs, Colorado rockymountainwonders.com
Actinolite can dispay reasonable clarity and can cut as cats eye or
star cabochons if you are lucky. Try giving some to a local lapidary
to have a play with but be prepared to be disappointed because if it
is serpentinised it will not be that likely that it is commercially
viable as a gemstone. If you are very lucky you may have associated
nickel or platium mineralisation and then you wont need to worry.
According to Wikipedia "Nephrite is a variety of the calcium and
magnesium rich amphibole mineral actinolite(aggregates of which also
make up one form of asbestos). The chemical formula for nephrite is
Ca2(Mg,Fe)5Si8O22(OH)2.[1] It is one of two different mineral
species called jade. "