I've spent possibly too much time over the past several days working on my one sacrificial larimar, and I've come to a few conclusions.

1. It is certainly possible to remove the matrix with lots of grinding and polishing.

2. When starting with an 8mm bead, the stone that's left in the end is substantially smaller.

3. It's hard to hold an irregular 8mm nugget bead in a clamp.

4. Gah, but this isn't worth it!

Yeah. I'd held out high hopes for improving on this larimar, but it's just not going to happen within my lifetime. I suppose it's time to learn what I've already learned about turquoise: embrace the matrix.

I mean, I see perfect looking turquoise with no matrix and think it looks fake, even when I know it's not. I have a turquoise cabochon that I picked up a few years ago when one of the local jewelry stores was closing and liquidating their entire inventory. This turquoise is really an exceptional one, I can tell, but there's just something about that uniform opaque blue that seems a little unnatural.

So give me my turquoise with some variations in color and a touch of black matrix. Now if I could just think that way about the larimar, I'd be set to go.

Labels: beads, jewelry, lapidary, larimar, turquoise