This colorless tourmaline has a gray cast, but a very pure body. It is bright and flashy standard round brilliant. It weighs 2.88 carats.
My father use to tell me over and over again that nature abhors a vacuum to his profound enjoyment. Well I think that nature abhors a tourmaline without color. So I always question if an Achroite has been heated or not. Some of what I have cut, such as the centers out of watermelon style crystals that I couldn’t keep their rinds on and the ends of bicolors that didn’t stay together, both from Afghanistan and others are colorless and have not been heated, so I know that natural Achroite exists. And since I can not tell if the posted stone has been heated or not, I keep it as an example of what a nice sized standard round brilliant would look like in colorless tourmaline heated or not. It definitely has a gray overtone, is eye clean and bright. It weighs 2.88 carats.
Bruce
About Bruce Fry
I was born in Summit, NJ in 1947 and graduated from Summit High School in 1966. I graduated from the Colorado School of Mines in 1970 and after spending another year in graduate school, I left to see the world of Brazil. After spending some more time discovering myself, I ended up working for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for 32 years as an Air Quality Engineer in the Department of Environmental Protection. I retired in 2007 and took up faceting gemstones again after a long hiatus that reached back to my twenties. I had started cutting cabochons when I was 13 and bought my first faceting machine when I was 15, but ran out of money and time until I retired.
My great love in gemology is tourmaline and the collection presented here represents my effort to get as much beauty and variety in the colors of tourmaline as I can. I was particularly lucky in being able to get unheated cuprian tourmaline before copper was discovered in gem grade tourmaline from Mozambique.
This colorless tourmaline has a gray cast, but a very pure body. It is bright and flashy standard round brilliant. It weighs 2.88 carats.
