I came across a beautiful lot of Euclase crystals from a new dealer that was in Tucson "just visiting and checking the show".
He runs an Emerald mine in Brazil and is associating with the owner of an Euclase mine in Rio Grande do Norte. He offered me a large lot of Euclase that included single crystals and some druzy crystals on Quartz. I noted a very cute specimen on matrix. It was a thumbnail but very attractive. It was different from the rest of the lot, and although smaller, it was one of my favorite pieces. I bought the best pieces of the lot. At home, when I started photographing the piece for my website, all the close-ups made me have a weird feeling about it. I started to look very closely and poke it with a needle but it felt very solid, I took a couple pictures more but still, something just didn't feel right. I put the piece under UV light. Not all glue fluoresce, but lots of them do. In this case it didn't seem to fluoresce. Maybe a tiny bit. The most used glues for this kind of "job" are soluble in acetone. I left the piece in a container filled with nail polish remover and covered with a lid for a few hours. When I checked, I started to see an opaque white substance around the junction of the two parts and, poking with a tweezer, I could also feel the texture.
It took me a couple other dips on the acetone to release the two pieces.
Isn't it amazing? I am almost sure that the person that sold me didn't know. Usually this kind of crafty work is made at the mines. I have been seeing more and more of those "matrix pieces", and from now on, I will carry my polish remover to the shows too.
Here is a sequence of photos. The top row has the photos as it was when I bought it. and the rest is the process of detaching them. If you click on the photo, it will show you a bigger version.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Como diz o outro, quem não cola não sai da escola. Parece que da mina também não! Amei a acetona!
ReplyDelete