I studied gems with the Foldscope and found it to be a pretty awesome portable tool. Couple of issues: using hard gemstones with pointed culets, I happened to scratch the lo-mag lens. Switched to hi-mag and tried to be more careful, but that’s definitely a concern. I had some tiny gems glued to slides to study, and some loose, which I held in the gap with gem tweezers. Hard to hold a stone, move the image around, and focus at the same time, but I did manage to get some great shots.

Here’s how slides were prepared. The first photo shows natural opal (with some crazing – natural internal crackling) at low magnification. Second photo shows synthetic opal taken at high magnification, with characteristic “snakeskin” pattern that proves it is synthetic.

I have many other photos, but will put them in a separate post, since this says I’ve hit my max size limit for photos.

Quartz with Lepidocrocite inclusions, not mounted (held in Foldscope with tweezers)

More to come!

GemGirl