Results from sending a stone to the GIA to be tested for copper.

Posted on September 27, 2016 by Bruce Fry

Well it took $152 and a month to get the stone back with a report. There is no mention of copper in the report. Instead, it says that the cause of the color in the gemstone could not be determined. After awhile I figured that meant the tourmaline did not have copper in it , but to be sure that the stone was tested for copper, I asked the jeweler to call and confirm that. It was confirmed that it does no have copper. My spectrometer has problems with identifying copper in purplish reds because of absorption in the infrared by manganese +3. I still think the stone will be purchased.

About Bruce Fry

I was born in Summit, NJ in 1947 and graduated from Summit High School in 1966. I graduated from the Colorado School of Mines in 1970 and after spending another year in graduate school, I left to see the world of Brazil. After spending some more time discovering myself, I ended up working for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for 32 years as an Air Quality Engineer in the Department of Environmental Protection. I retired in 2007 and took up faceting gemstones again after a long hiatus that reached back to my twenties. I had started cutting cabochons when I was 13 and bought my first faceting machine when I was 15, but ran out of money and time until I retired. My great love in gemology is tourmaline and the collection presented here represents my effort to get as much beauty and variety in the colors of tourmaline as I can. I was particularly lucky in being able to get unheated cuprian tourmaline before copper was discovered in gem grade tourmaline from Mozambique.
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