[Jewelry making - Article 00460] - Re: [Orchid] Yellow Turquoise

[Zen Sojourner]

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>     I don't know where you live, Zen Sojourner, but there must be
>     classes available somewhere. 

    Nope.  And I couldn't afford them if there were any.  I live 100
    miles from the nearest city of any decent size, in the Ozarks.  I
    make less than $5000 a year at my "day job".  Employment
    opportunities around here are few and FAR between.  I have other
    things to do with my money regarding training that, at this point,
    have to come first. 

    What I want is to deal with a company that doesn't make it so hard
    to find out what it is they're selling you, and that's apparently
    NOT Fire Mountain Gems.  So I'm looking for suppliers who don't use
    misleading nomenclature to move their "stuff", or at least don't
    make you e-mail them for every item you're interested in to find out
    what it REALLY is.  I don't know where you came up with the "red
    malachite" description you found at Fire Mountain's website, but
    there's no link to it from the item I was looking at. 

    BTW, I DID google this stuff.  Unfortunately, if you google "red
    malachite" you get a bunch of links to other bead dealers who are
    also mislabeling their products - and aren't identifying the actual
    substance.  If you look at gemological sites (and I looked at as
    many as I could find and comprehend) they don't use the wrong names,
    so you still can't identify the bead or cab you've only seen
    mislabeled in a picture on a website.  In fact, sometimes they use
    only proper scientific names so that I STILL can't find what I'm
    looking for if it's a common name like "jade" where "jade" has no
    actual scientific basis. 

    I did finally get an e-mail back from Fire Mountain about the red
    "malachite", which included a statement that their website software
    doesn't support quote marks so they no longer have these phony items
    identified that way on their website (and as an ex-programmer I know
    that's nonsense).  Then she went on to talk about "traditional"
    malachite (I notice her e-mail program handles quote marks just
    fine) before finally identifying the red 'malachite' as banded
    jasper. 

    I'm sorry, but the only "traditional" malachite IS authentic
    malachite, there isn't any other kind.  And it STILL isn't red. 

    Sheesh!  So I'm scouting out other dealers who are hopefully more
    forthcoming in their descriptions.  From what I can tell, most of
    Fire Mountains stuff isn't exactly top quality, or even middlin'
    quality, anyway. 

    I could be wrong, but I've seen an awful lot of stuff that's labeled
    "C" or "D" quality or, even more worrisome, not labeled for quality
    at all.  There's some stuff I'll buy from them, but a whole lot more
    I won't.  I have better things to do with my time (it took 2 days
    and 3 e-mails to actually get the red "malachite" identified), and
    I'd rather pay a bit more for a known substance. 

Thanks.
Sojourner

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