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Mineralogy Question From A Woodworker


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Hey everybody, glad to have found your forum here. I'm a woodworker and use various crushed materials including soapstone as inlay substrate in some of my pieces, and I thought I'd venture out into the mineralogy world to see if I might find some advice. I'm in search of new color tones of the blue and green type but I'm unfamiliar with what minerals might be of use to me. Would you have any suggestions for what minerals I might take a look at for future potential color sources? Dark / solid hues tend not to work as well with the natural wood colors, but the medium hues certainly do. A material need not be as soft as soapstone to be useful, just crushable (if that's even a word).

Thanks, I'm all ears!

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Sodalite, lapis lazuli, turquoise, varcasite, jade/nephrite, serpentine (wear a respirator), amazonite/labradorite, aventurine, malachite, chrysocolla….

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Azurite(blue) and Malachite(green) are two rather soft copper minerals with stunningly pure bright colors.  They are relatively common and not that expensive. You could moderate their intensity by mixing some white or black mineral powder.  They tend to form acids when wet, so seal them well.

Show a picture of your work as I do woodworking too.

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Depends on how much you want to spend and if you want powder, irregular shapes, or chips. A general rule of thumb when you search: minerals lacking specific cleavage planes may turn to powder, or irregular chunks. Minerals with good cleavage will tend to chip or flake. 

For bright, variable hues the coppers ores often lack cleavage so might be more prone to powdering or irregular shapes. These would be the easiest and cheapest vivid colors to work with, but the softness makes getting nice flat chips pretty hard. I would guess the harder ones (turquoise) are probably better for getting workable pieces after crushing.

If you want flatter chips/flakes and similar or even more vivid medium blue/green hues, then both gem silica and crysoprase fracture well and carry similar colors as the copper ores. They are very hard minerals though if you are used to soapstone, and they can get very expensive. And they will turn to white powder if you crush too much.

Minerals like nephrite can be great medium greens, but they will turn hazy white along fractures if crushed. They need to be cut/polished (or kept wet/oiled) to return back to green. This happens more often with minerals lacking perfect fracture, I believe.

Also, some minerals will lose their color if put in the sun (crysoprase, amethyst, etc). So UV coating may be a good idea for stuff left in outside, near windows, etc. 

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A gem silica vein on my claim. It's lost color and darkened due to exposure to the sun.

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