Smelt Quartz?

I could be mistaken but I believe glass is basically made by melting quartz sand and silica into a liquid state. Whether you use quartz sand or actual quartz crystals the result is the same, the micro crystals of quartz are destroyed in the melting process and either way regardless of colorization what you end up with is just ordinary everyday glass. Whether it's molded in the shape of a natural quartz crystal, a sphere, a sculpture or a common drinking glass it's all just glass. As long as the seller clearly states that it's smelted or melted or manufactured I see nothing wrong with selling it, however it probably should be listed under glassware and not in the mineral/crystal section on eBay.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/01/2011 04:53PM by Uwe Kolitsch.

I broke my clear quartz wand today. It was about 5cm long and the thickness of a thumb. It fell from my fingers as I was heading into the subway. It completely shattered into 4 pieces. I even got sliced when picked up a piece. I bought it when I was in South Africa at a gem store. Now that I've read a few posts, how can you tell if what your buying is real quartz or if it is glass??

Also, any spiritual people out there who might know what the event might signify??

thanks!
Kiana
*sad girl in Montreal, Canada*

If you hold polarized sunglasses up to a LCD monitor and rotate them until they block the light, and rotate quartz around the central point of it's length(like a propeller) between the monitor and sunglasses, it will blink as it lets light pass and not pass. Glass will not change when you do this with it.

Kiana, re "what the event might signify"... It signifies that you should keep your nice quartz crystals wrapped up in a padded box while running to the subway.

The good news is that quartz crystals of 5cm length like yours are very common, so you shouldn't have any trouble at all replacing it inexpensively if you visit a mineral show/gemboree. Better yet, join your local mineral club and they might be able to point you to a field trip you could join to go dig up a virgin quartz crystal from the ground yourself, which is quite a lot more fun than buying them, and saves you from all sorts of scams by "spiritual" business folk who will overcharge you shamelessly for a crystal with alleged extra supernatural powers that no instrument can detect.

If the broken pieces of your quartz will scratch window glass, you can be pretty sure it is real quartz. Was it a natural crystal or was it a cut and polished replica of a quartz crystal? Those are generally made from real quartz as well. If it was a natural quartz crystal, look for the natural striations on the prism faces that run perpendicular to the C axis (the long dimension of the crystal) If it scratches glass and has the striations, it is certainly quartz.

Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.

Kiana,
I sent you an email that may comfort you a bit :) I hope it gets through any spam filters you have. It will be coming from missmirabai@mooncavecrystals.com

A friend was really happy to give me this piece, because she was told it was a crystal. I think it is what this discussion was about smelt quartz, because I see bubbles with my loop, and it is the size of a bowling ball. So I guess buyer beware.

Smelt quartz invariably involves a dealer, particularly one who makes the material, leading to the well-known phrase: "He who smelt it, dealt it."

Smelt quartz crystals have twinned dorsal fins. Bart

I wonder if smelt is a sort of abbreviation for smelter product (glass).

Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.

There are a lot of factors here to the distinctions being made. To recap: smelted quartz is fake, and consists of melted glass, therefore the advertised product is a deception.

Now I pose an innocent question inspired by jamie swishers statement.

What is the diference between quartz and the silicone glass? is the distinction valid? What is the diference between quartz and glass. DISTINCTIONS OTHER than the fact
that the quartz grows and glass or silicone glass is "smelted"?

I will share some information I have uncovered thanks to google chrome.

I looked up Silicone glass and found it is used for movies when they need actors or stuntmen to go through glass. I found this most worth noting because I am a filmaker myself But i found that most glass contains silicone BECAUSE:

The silicate minerals make up the largest and most important class of rock-forming minerals, constituting approximately 90 percent of the crust of the Earth. They are classified based on the structure of their silicate group. Silicate minerals all contain silicon and oxygen.

Now what is glass made out of? Most glass is made with silicates, Silicates include Quartz. so in my thinking the difference that they are melted or not as a prime factor in the validity of the aforementioned smelted quartz. As I see it that is an honest description of what it is. Though if you can clarify of correct please do. Im not a geologist or chemist.

Silicone glass is presumably a glass which has no crystal structure. A crystal structure is a bunch of atoms in a certain arrangement that is symmetrically repeated to fill space and make a crystal you can hold in your hand. Glasses on the other hand are usually spaghetti like strings of negatively charged ions whose charge osbalanced by single positive ions, The string are intertwined together in a complicated mess that has no symmetry. The strings are so tangled that they can't relax into a nice symmetric crystal. I hope that helps. .

"Silicone" is NOT silicon. Silicone is a flexible, rubbery material with some silicon in its mixture. I do not know the manner in which this material is made.

Standard window glass is also known as a soda glass. It contains sodium, calcium and aluminum which makes it easier to melt than pure quartz.

Quartz glass is a very specialized material, and difficult to work with. It has a very high melting point.

Bart

Micah,
I think you need to learn a little about chemistry. Did you ever grow salt or sugar crystals on a string in school? Quartz, as a mineral are the elements silicon and oxygen that have been dissolved in a solution of some sort and have precipitated out of solution into a crystalline lattice. If there is open space in the ground when the crystals grow, like in cracks in sandstone or ancient gas bubbles in basalt they form quartz crystals that collectors cherish. I don't think there is any official definition of what smelt quartz is, so I guess you can use the term how ever you want, but it usually refers to a man made melt of some kind that often contains silica or silicon dioxide, but when it cools it does not have time to arrange itself into a crystalline lattice like quartz crystals and does not have the same physical properties as quartz. The name was originated like thousands of similar terms to trade on a "higher value" name in order to dupe people into thinking the stuff is something other than the real thing. Originally the term crystal referred to quartz crystals. Quartz crystals in antiquity were the standard against which transparency of solid things was measured. Originally the makers of glass could not match the transparency of natural crystal, but as they got better and their goods more transparent and clear they started calling their stuff crystal to trade on a "higher value" name. Eventually all the glass makers called their transparent glass crystal and today when you use the word crystal, most people think of glass. They completely stole the name.

I was under the impression that "movie glass" that stunt men crashed through was made by melting sugar into flat transparent sheets or molding it into bottles.

[www.ehow.com]

Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.

I've never wondered about "movie glass", but it sure seems likely that sugar glass is safer to get thrown through than real window glass.

My house has 100 year old window glass in places. It shows ripples and other defects. I consider those panes valuable antiques. But then I consider many useless things valuable. I'm crazy. Are there any completely rational Mindaters ?

In modern times, window glass is made by pouring soda glass melt onto molten tin. A very flat surface results. It is called "float glass".

I love the technology involved in the simple things we take for granted.

Bart

I believe a British chap by the name of Bessemer developed the process, and some better know things relating to steel manufacture.

Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.

The renewing of this thread renewed also an old question which is still in my mind.

During my business live I travelled frequently to China. In Hongkong I saw at a temple gardens sculptures of dragons with glass like bowls as eyes and some of them had such a bowl also on the tongue. The bowls consists of a colourless, transparent material with some small bubbles inside. The bowls look like cheap paperweights. So far so good, however, beside the sculpture was a table made of bronze with the name of the donor of the “Dragon Eyes”. The worth of such a bronze table would be the manyfold of a glass paperweight. Therefore I assumed that the “Dragon eyes” are not made of simple glass.

My Chinese colleagues meant that these Dragon Eyes are made of a natural, very rare material but they had no more information about that.

Has anybody of you more information about that ?

Uwe Ludwig

> The bowls consists of a colourless, transparent material with some small bubbles inside.

Sounds like glass to me.

Just to add to the "fun", my recollection is that standard window glass is technically a fluid. That is why Bart's antique glass has developed ripples.
Very old widows are thicker at the bottom than the top due to extremely slow creep.

Sometimes I see Chinese characters in this forum. May be anybody of these Chinese gentlemen heard about the Dragon Eyes?

Uwe Ludwig