Whois & Analysis for smartpartscrafts.com

A gemstone (also called a gem, fine gem, jewel, precious stone or semi-precious stone) is a piece of mineral crystal which, in cut and polished form, is used to make jewelry or other adornments.

However, certain rocks (such as lapis lazuli) or organic materials that are not minerals (such as amber, jet, and pearl) are also used for jewelry and are therefore often considered to be gemstones as well.

Most gemstones are hard, but some soft minerals are used in jewelry because of their luster or other physical properties that have aesthetic value.

Rarity is another characteristic that lends value to a gemstone.

Apart from jewelry, from earliest antiquity engraved gems and hardstone carvings, such as cups, were major luxury art forms.

A gem maker is called a lapidary or gemcutter; a diamond worker is a diamantaire.

A cabochon, from the Middle French word caboche (meaning "head"), is a gemstone which has been shaped and polished as opposed to faceted.

The resulting form is usually a convex (rounded) obverse with a flat reverse.

Cutting en cabochon (French: "in the manner of a cabochon") is usually applied to opaque gems, while faceting is usually applied to transparent stones.

Hardness is also taken into account as softer gemstones with a hardness lower than 7 on the Mohs hardness scale are easily scratched, mainly by silicon dioxide in dust and grit.

This would quickly make translucent gems unattractive—instead they are polished as cabochons, making the scratches less evident.

Silver is a metallic element with symbol Ag and atomic number 47.

The symbol Ag stems from Latin, derived from the Greek ὰργὀς (literally "shiny" or "white"), and ultimately from a Proto-Indo-European language root reconstructed as *h2erǵ-, "grey" or "shining".

A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and reflectivity of any metal.

The metal is found in the Earth's crust in the pure, free elemental form ("native silver"), as an alloy with gold and other metals, and in minerals such as argentite and chlorargyrite.

Most silver is produced as a byproduct of copper, gold, lead, and zinc refining.

Silver is more abundant than gold, but it is much less abundant as a native metal.

Its purity is typically measured on a per mille basis; a 94%-pure alloy is described as "0.940 fine".

A bead is a small, decorative object that is formed in a variety of shapes and sizes of a material such as stone, bone, shell, glass, plastic, wood or pearl and that a small hole is drilled for threading or stringing.

Beads range in size from under to over in diameter.

A pair of beads made from Nassarius sea snail shells, approximately 100,000 years old, are thought to be the earliest known examples of jewellery.

Beadwork is the art or craft of making things with beads.

Beads can be woven together with specialized thread, strung onto thread or soft, flexible wire, or adhered to a surface (e.g. fabric, clay).

Lithic reduction involves the use of a hard hammer percussor, such as a hammerstone, a soft hammer fabricator (made of wood, bone or antler), or a wood or antler punch to detach lithic flakes from a lump of tool stone called a lithic core (also known as the "objective piece").

As flakes are detached in sequence, the original mass of stone is reduced; hence the term for this process.

Lithic reduction may be performed in order to obtain sharp flakes, of which a variety of tools can be made, or to rough out a blank for later refinement into a projectile point, knife, or other object.

Flakes of regular size that are at least twice as long as they are broad are called blades.

Lithic tools produced this way may be bifacial (exhibiting flaking on both sides) or unifacial (exhibiting flaking on one side only).