Thu. Mar 28th, 2024

Have you ever seen a businessman selling Vein Dragon Agate? At first glance, this may seem hard to believe. It is cracked, often pastel or light-colored rock that is rare in nature, but the stone is still affordable. I mean most newcomers own a piece in their collection.

So is it man-made?

Dragon Vein Agate is 100% man-made, containing glass and color, or colored chalcedony. The latter is a “real” stone, but it’s as far from natural as you might get if it wasn’t completely lab-built.

See, there’s an entire industry selling fake stone. There are actually two professions that specialize in stone imitation if you delve into them and they have very little to do with each other.

The first are those who try their best to reproduce the gem material. A good example is the sale of synthetic green beryl as emeralds. These high-value scams are becoming harder to prevent and they are on another level of fraud. Like actual cheating, actionable, crime level because of the numbers involved.

Your average hunting dog rarely encounters such scams. Most people’s aim is to invest in gems, where the stone will be dragged and not seen for long. It is immoral, illegal, and anyone caught red-handed faces severe punishment.

Then you have colored agate, a composite material consisting of crushed stone and the like. I would even consider reading topaz and mysterious quartz under this umbrella.

These stones were obvious at first glance fake from an experienced hound, but they were so beautiful and cheap that they ended up in a lot of collections. It is also not a sign against the seller if they are offering it for sale unless they argue that the stones are real.

Dragonfly agate falls into this next category: it’s an obvious trap to experienced hounds, but it’s beautiful. It really needs all fair people.

How are dragons made of onyx?

Dragon vein agate, not just glass, is produced by bleaching, quenching, and then painting with light-colored chalcedony. You can easily distinguish between the two methods: Agate with evenly spaced dark veins is usually glass, less regular spacing is usually colored chalcedony.

Making glass is quite annoying if you don’t make glass. The point is to get the right sample of the glass before welding it to the final shape or setting it up as a sheet to cut.

You can spot the colored Chalcedony dragon vein agate by its inner banding and irregular cracks.

The ideal way to do it?

Muriatic acid boils. Concentrated hydrochloric acid is strong enough to remove the color from natural agate and leave a bleached stone. Don’t try to do it at home, muriatic acid is harmful and if you don’t have the knowledge to handle it, you will get seriously injured.

It does not always remove all natural colors. For example, the example below is clearly a pre-processed brown agate and the central bands still have some visible color.

Real dragon vein agate

After the initial bleaching, the stone is removed. The process is simple and takes advantage of some of the natural properties of silica.

To do this, the stone is heated to a relatively high temperature and then immersed in water. Smaller stones can be easily done with a torch; large stones are usually heated in a sunken pit or oven before sinking.

The process takes advantage of thermal shock. If you’ve ever rebelled and quickly watched a hot cup or baking dish cool and see it crumble, you’ve found it works. With a little bit of normal chalcedony, you’ll have a bunch of internal cracks.

Thermal shock can be cyclical, or repetitive, as long as the rock does not have as many or as few cracks as the manufacturer.

The colors used to make these agates can be difficult to figure out. Although this process is largely done, very little documentation has been made available to them for obvious reasons.

Chalcedony is soaked in pigment and can be partially covered to give different colors to the “cells”.

Oh, and just the more obscure thing? Sometimes Dragon Vein Agate is created using this process but bleaching avoids chalcedony and uses glass instead.

This technique is relatively common. I see slightly different colors and techniques used to describe some stones. Crab fire agate is a good example: it’s usually glass, but sometimes it’s synthetic quartz and sometimes it’s even heat-treated cornice.

Valuable Dragon Agate?

Dragon agate is the most expensive. You almost never come across expensive accessories, often made in the form of cheap beads or cabochons and placed in custom jewelry.If you want to know more about this then visit this site  Alibaba Blog.