Amber Listserv / Tough stuff

[Andy Ng]

Hi guys,

I came across 2.1kg of this stuff. It's the hardest resinite I ever came
across. The piece in the first photo went thru 3 pieces of 3"x3" 100 grit
sandpaper (wet sanding) before the thin crust gave way to resin. It took
lots more elbow grease to reach the 800 grit stage.As you can see, the
polishing of the surface was very sloppy (some hacksaw marks are still
visible)...mainly because I'd run out of energy, and was content enough to
see the real coloration of the piece. Splashing on acetone and surgical
alcohol showed no effects. Can't be scratched with fingernail, but iron
nails will scratch it. Question to those of you who work with other types of
amber: from my description, is it as hard as Burmite or others?

I really need to get another set of scratch sticks. Work has kept me going
full blast for the past several weeks. Yes, I've finally reached the stage
where I have to classify handling Borneo resinite as 'WORK'.

Andy
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: /pipermail/amber_ambericawest.com/attachments/20060815/e733599c/attachment-0001.html 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: DSCN2017.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 53193 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : /pipermail/amber_ambericawest.com/attachments/20060815/e733599c/attachment-0002.jpg 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: DSCN2022.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 106763 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : /pipermail/amber_ambericawest.com/attachments/20060815/e733599c/attachment-0003.jpg