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Smooth surfaced, non-faceted cuts of gemstones, in any shape.
Cabochons Index
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A
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agate
(black skin, Montana moss, Brazillian, sage plume, dyed slices)(moss)(plume)
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Agatized
Agatized refers to a fossilization process by which the organic material is replaced by chalcedony quartz.
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amazonite
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Amber - Mohs 2-2.5
Amber is fossilized pine tree resin. It is usually a golden yellow to a golden orange, but it is found in other colors. It can be transparent or opaque, clear or bubbly, and it can have things trapped in it, most notably insects.
Amber can dehydrate, causing cracking and color changes.
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amethyst stalactite slice
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Aragonite - Mohs 3.5-4
Aragonite is named for Aragon, Spain, where it was first discovered. It is a calcium carbonate and can found in a variety of colors, from white to pastel shades of tans, browns, reds, yellows, oranges, greens, and blues. The blue is my favorite. You see it more in specimens than in cabochons, but I buy them when I can find them.
In addition to being found as an inorganic mineral, aragonite is created by mollusks. It is a major contributor to the color plays of ammolite, paua, pearls, and other nacre or mother of pearl substances.
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asterism
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aventurine
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Azurite - Mohs 3.5
Azurite is a deep azure blue mineral that gets its color from copper. It doesn’t like to be heated (you can lose the color) so wire wrap is a great way to set it. It is often found intermixed with other copper minerals like malachite and cuprite.
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B
C
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Cal Silica (Rainbow Cal Silica)
See Rainbow Calsilica.
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calcite (orange calcite, cobalto calcite)
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Calligraphy Stone - Mohs 7
Calligraphy stone is a jasper from India. It is a fossil, but I’m not sure if it is fossilized grasses & reeds, fossilized shell, or some combination of both.
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carnelian (a yellow to orange agate)
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Chalcedony (cal-sid-ney) - Mohs 6.5-7
GENERAL: One of the major sub-sets of quartz. Includes agate, petrified wood, chrysoprase, bloodstone, jasper, carnelian, moss agate, dendritic agate, sagenitec agate, and plume agate.
SPECIFIC: A bluish/whitish/greyish chalcedony variety. Natural chalcedony normally is NOT banded. If you see something called chalcedony with banding in it, it is normally dyed agate.
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Chalcopyrite
See Peacock Ore.
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Chalcosiderite
See Turquoise.
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Charoite - Mohs 4
 Find Charoite Jewelry
Chaorite ranges from light purple with milky, pearly white swirls to a very dark purple, often with black markings. It is from Siberia, Russia.
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Chatoyant
Chatoyancy is also called the cat’s eye effect. The internal structure of the stone causes a band of light to glide over the surface as the stone is moved.
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Chrysocolla (Gemsilica) - Mohs 2.5-3.5, 6-8
Chrysocolla is a copper silicate. It ranges in color from blue to blue-green to green. It can be translucent or opaque.
Pure mineral chrysocolla is soft (2.5-3.5). Fortunately it likes to "agatize", intergrowing with quartz to form a harder (6-8) form of itself. Druse chrysocolla is also a result of this, with a crust of tiny quartz crystals forming over the agatized chrysocolla. The chrysocolla color completely wins in these rocks, thus they retain the name chrysocolla.
Gem silica chrysocolla, normally shortened to gemsilica, is another name for gem quality chrysocolla mixed with quartz (silica).
When the chrysocolla intergrows with clear sections of quartz, you may see it called Chrysocolla Quartz.
Eilat Stone, from Eilat, Israel, is chrysocolla intergrown with turquoise and malachite.
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chrysoprase (a pure green agate)
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Coral
See Indonesian Fossil Coral.
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Cuprite - Mohs 3.5
Cuprite is a a red to brick-colored mineral. You don’t see it as much by itself as intermixed with other copper minerals such as azurite and malachite. When cut as a cabochon of cuprite, it often has copper or white inclusions.
Although rare, it can occur in crystals large enough to be faceted. They are definitely collector’s items, said to mix the color of garnet with the brilliance of diamond.
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