This video is a thorough explanation with cracking of numerous samples to demonstrate what I mean. Please like and subscribe if you have found this video to be useful. I will try to make more videos and do more tests.
There is a lot of fake turquoise out there because it is a popular stone for jewelry making, but many of the mines around the world have been depleted. Most of the fake turquoise is made with howlite, a chalky white borate mineral that is found in sedimentary rocks. While howlite and dyed howlite are popular in jewelry with healing energy, it is not good if you think you are buying genuine turquoise but it is dyed howlite.
Often the howlite is dyed a bright blue. As soon as you crack it open, you will see a white interior with a blue ring on the outside. Howlite is also softer than turquoise and can be scratched more easily. However, there are some factories that might crush the howlite, apply dye and compress it back into a solid blue stone. They would then apply brown veins onto it. This is exactly what happened when I cracked a dyed howlite bead open - you can see the brown dye that permeated inside the drill hole.
Another fake I opened up in the video is one that is far harder; it was a clay bead with a baked on hard porcelain shell that had blue on top of it. The tell tale sign was the faded blue, it was lighter on certain surfaces.
In summary, the best way to tell if it is fake is to break the bead open. Secondary is scratching or seeing dyes inside the hole or spotting the colour fades. The price is also a good tell - if it is too good to be true, it probably is. Lastly, go with a trusted source. If this is not possible, find one that has a money back guarantee. Crack some of the pieces once you've purchased them and if they're fake, get your money back.
Stabilized vs Reconstituted
Most of the turquoise is too soft to be cut and polished - they crumble too easily. The solution is stabilizing the stone. In less expensive stones, they do this by adding resin/epoxy, along with pressure, which fills the cracks and weak points, and adds a layer of support. Sometimes, colour is added, but honest suppliers would label that product as colour enhanced. Better quality turquoise would be stabilized with the Zachery Process, invented by James Zachery in 1980, a trade secret process in which no pressure or additives are applied. Only chemical analysis can distinguish Zachery process treated and natural untreated turquoise.
Stabilizing happens to over 80% of the turquoise that is in jewelry on the market place. Likelihood is that your non-antique turquoise is stabilized. This is different from reconstituted turquoise, which takes bits of turquoise, usually left over from other processing, and combines it with epoxy and then compressed it into a new solid block to be further cut for jewelry making. Sometimes larger bits are ground up and dye is added. This is not unlike quartz counters, which have all the properties of the original stone, except that it is engineered. Generally reconstituted turquoise is less expensive than stabilized turquoise.
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