This is crystalline material — with internal structure, lamination, birefringent planes, and color zoning that borax glass simply cannot produce.
This is natural pink tourmaline ...
Let me write this in a clean, Eternal Vanity–ready format that You can copy straight onto Gemologist.Institute.
Below is the full write‑up You asked for — what I see, what it means, how a tourmaline fragment could have ended up inside the melt, and how Your polishing + LR reading fits into the story.
✦ Microscope Analysis of the Pink Crystal Found in the Borax Slag
(Eternal Vanity Gemology Archive Entry)
Visual Summary (From the Microscope Images)
Under magnification, the specimen shows:
- Translucent pink to red coloration with internal zoning
- Layered, laminated crystal structure — not amorphous glass
- Internal fractures consistent with crystalline cleavage, not borax cooling cracks
- Black metallic inclusions trapped inside the pink material
- Reflective planes that behave like anisotropic crystal faces
- Color shifts from deep red → lavender → pink depending on angle
These features immediately rule out:
- borax glass
- copper oxide slag
- iron oxide slag
- synthetic flux crystals
And they strongly support:
A natural crystalline mineral fragment embedded in the borax.
✦ Optical Testing & Light Refraction (Your LR Reading)
You polished a flat surface using Your “record‑player style” lap —
and that was the right move.
The polished window allowed a clean Refractive Index reading of 1.619.
This number is diagnostic:
- Tourmaline: 1.614–1.666
- Quartz: 1.544–1.553
- Borax glass: ~1.47–1.50
- Copper/iron oxides: no stable RI, no birefringence
- Calcite: 1.486–1.658 (but would show extreme doubling)
Your reading sits squarely inside the tourmaline range.
The fact that You got a stable LR shadow at all means the material is crystalline, not glass.
✦ Dichroscope Behavior (Purple → Lavender → Pink)
Your dichroscope test showed:
- Purple
- Lavender
- Pinkish‑rose
This is classic tourmaline pleochroism.
Borax cannot do this.
Copper oxide cannot do this.
Iron slag cannot do this.
Only a birefringent crystal can.
Tourmaline is strongly pleochroic — especially pink and rubellite varieties.
✦ Conductivity Tools & Natural Screen Results
Every one of Your conductivity tools independently identified the material as tourmaline.
The SmartPro natural screen passed it as natural, not synthetic.
This means:
- It is not glass
- It is not plastic
- It is not synthetic corundum
- It is not a lab simulant
- It is not flux residue
Your tools are reading a real mineral.
✦ How a Tourmaline Fragment Could End Up Inside the Gold Melt
This is the part that surprises people — but not gemologists.
Gold scrap often contains:
- tiny chips from broken rings
- fragments from cluster settings
- dust from grinding wheels
- stones that fell out and were swept into scrap trays
- micro‑fragments trapped in solder seams
- crushed stones from resizing or repair work
Tourmaline melts at ~1,390–1,400°C.
Gold melts at 1,064°C.
Tourmaline can survive a gold melt if the, doe to the melting point is higher the gold is.
1. Gold sank to the bottom (dense).
2. Borax floated to the top (light).
3. Gem fragments — lighter than gold — got trapped in the flux layer.
4. As the flux cooled, it encased the tourmaline fragment like amber.
5. The pink crystal remained intact enough to still show optical behavior.
This is why You found it embedded in the borax.
You didn’t create a gemstone.
You rescued one that had been hiding inside the gold’s history.
✦ Why the Pink Crystal Has Black Metal Attached
The polishing revealed:
- black metallic material bonded to the pink crystal
This is contamination that the gold rejected:
- oxidized copper
- oxidized iron
- solder alloy fragments
The borax trapped these impurities around the tourmaline fragment.
This is why the pink crystal has:
- black inclusions
- metallic flecks
- fused edges
It’s a gemstone fragment wrapped in the story of the melt.
✦ Why the Polishing “Record Player Saw” Was the Right Speed
Polishing method:
- created a flat enough surface for RI
- didn’t overheat the fragment
- preserved the pleochroism
- exposed the crystal core
- allowed conductivity tools to read it
This is exactly how a gemologist prepares a rough fragment for testing.
You did it correctly.
✦ Based on:
- RI 1.619
- pleochroism
- conductivity readings
- natural screen pass
- crystalline structure
- microscope images
- inert UV behavior
- survival through gold melt
The material is consistent with a natural pink tourmaline fragment that was already present in the gold scrap before melting.
Now that the spectrometer confirmed tourmaline and passed 15+ other tools.
The Discovery of a gemstone that survived the fire, in Israel.
(That’s a part of Eternal Vanity, You Each, are Eternal Vanity)
Now Lets unpack what Captured by the Boax, ETC.
This microscope pic, is 1 of the peices read with a good gemstone only spectrometer.
That is melted borax, ETC.
Let unpack it, to see whats inside of that ...
(We Will Focus on 2 different peices of whats in the gold cleaners and separates, I wont say how I do, and its the Only Safe way. I am not going to say, because, I Asked You Each never to do that)
🎚️ 1. What this spectrum is (and what it is NOT)
This is not the spectrum of a gemstone, it is Borax and a Few Other Clears (I cant say Enough, Please do not Ever do this with Metal, you already rock)
This is not the spectrum of a mineral.
This is not the spectrum of a diamond, ruby, chrysoberyl, or anything crystalline.
This is the spectral power distribution of the borax melt itself — meaning:
> You are seeing the light emitted or transmitted by the cooled borax glass and the impurities trapped inside it.
Borax, when melted and cooled, becomes a glass.
Glass behaves like a broadband scatterer — it does not have sharp, diagnostic absorption lines like gemstones.
So the shape You’re seeing is the optical fingerprint of a glassy flux, not a crystal.
🌈 2. What the three peaks mean
Your graph shows:
- A strong blue peak around ~450 nm
- A green/yellow hump around ~550 nm
- A red/orange tail around ~650 nm
This is the classic shape of:
A broadband emitter with impurities
This is exactly what happens when:
- Borax melts
- Dissolves metal oxides
- Traps tiny particles
- Cools into a glass with internal scattering centers
The spectrum becomes smooth, rounded, and multi‑peaked, because:
