Hobbies And Interests
Things You'll Need
Instructions
Familiarize yourself with the Mohs hardness scale. You can find this scale in any mineralogy book or on the web. It is constructed of 10 different levels for classifying minerals by hardness.
Make a hardness tester. Go to the mineralogy shop and ask for a sample of each gem on the Mohs hardness scale. Make sure to remember which one represents each level of hardness (some people mark them with the number). Take each sample and place them in a pouch.
Test the rough gem stone's hardness. Place the encountered gem stone in water and move to the sunlight. Take out your hardest mineral from the pouch and try to scratch the stone you are testing. If it leaves a well-defined scratch, then it does not belong to that category. Successively take out lower numbered minerals from the pouch and perform the same test until there is no scratch.
Identify the class. Once you have a stone of equal harness, match the tested stone against the pouch stone, and you have found the class. For example, if it doesn't leave a scratch at Orthoclase, then you have found an Orthoclase, a No. 6 on the Mohs scale.
Perform a color test. Now take out your gemstone book and look up the color characteristics for Orthoclase. For example, if your stone exhibits vibrant iridescence, then you have most probably found a Labradorite, which is well worth keeping.