Bluebird Chrysocolla

Bluebird Chrysocolla comes from an old copper mine in Gila County, Arizona. The mine was closed down in the very early 1980’s, and this material has been exceedingly scarce and troublesome to find nowadays. If you come across some Bluebird, the amazement you get from holding a piece and gazing at all the brilliant colors is like no other stone. With the azurite, chrysocolla, malachite, tenorite and so many other copper minerals all united in one material is just amazing to see all these bright blues, reds and greens in one. The patterns in Bluebird are amazing, no two stones are alike, and yet you can easily spot this material from any other on the planet! Finding Bluebird can be tough, but there is still some that can be found at shows, eBay and most definitely on Facebook, where I recently found some in The Slab Depot group. When buying rough, one of the first things to consider, ask the seller if it is stabilized. The majority of Bluebird certainly needs it, so always keep that in mind when pricing it out. The average price to have material stabilized is approximately $25/lbs, and even if you do it yourself, it’s still costly, so remember to factor that price in. When buying rough, you can never tell what you’re getting by looking at it from the outside, but I doubt anyone would be disappointed with what they get. Every piece is different, and every slab cut, there will never be any two the same. I think the majority of bluebird is stabile enough to slab, but this is where you look carefully at each slab and see how fractured it is, or how much light chrysocolla or tenorite is running through it, those are the two softer portions to watch out for. When you cut a slab, lightly wet a rag and wipe the face of the slab and watch as it dries, the surface will dry much quicker than the water trapped in the cracks, so the cracks will prominently show themselves. This will give you an idea whether you can proceed and cab around a few fractures, or whether you just need to stop there and get the material stabilized first. Stabilizing slabs is always far better then trying to stabilize the whole piece of rough, it gets your epoxy in further making your material far better to work with. Once you get all your preforms cut out and ready to cab, just know this material has many copper minerals in it with different hardnesses and will not cab evenly. There are not many tricks to getting around some of the undercutting you will experience when cabbing this material, but some things I like to do is shape and dome on a 220 steel wheel, then skip the 280 grit soft resin wheel all together, the 280 is a bit too aggressive and will undercut the most. So, once you finish on the 220 steel wheel, go directly to the 600 grit and smooth it out and get out of all your scratches at this stage before moving on. From this point, stick to your normal routine, and continue to the 1200 grit onwards. Stabilized materials will take on a much smoother and more of a glossier polish than natural. So if you are working with natural material, some parts may shine up much nicer than others, this is to be expected. Stabilized materials with have more of a uniform polish, but as an end result, but will be absolutely gorgeous.