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CITRINE : The advice you have received so far is excellent: better to buy yourself acitrine. However, if you would like to experiment, and don't mindsacrificing the amethyst, you can try heat treating yourself. Because thestone is pale, you will probably get a pale citrine, but here goes. Get a baking pan, like you would use for bread. Fill it half full of cleansand. (Home Depot has it.) Put in the amethyst. Fill the pan to the topwith sand. Put the pan in your oven and start heating it at 200 degrees.Raise the temperature about 50 to 100 degrees an hour until you get to themax temp, about 550 degrees F. Let it bake for an hour. Then shut theoven off an let it cool on its own, without opening the door. The nextday, check the stone. You can probably do fairly well with 550F, althoughgoing to 900 or 1000 would be better.
CITRINE : This works well for agate, too, but you really have to change the temp slowly.Would the color be permanent or will it fade with time or if left out inthe sun?I checked Sinkankas's "Gemstone Enhancement" and did not find any mentionof the color fading in the sun. Fading seems to be more associated withradiation treatments of other stones -- in general.I used to heat treat quite a bit of agate, doing it in one of thoseportable broiler/ovens that you can often find in a second hand store.These have a thermostat and will go up to 550 F, and I modified the tempcontrol to go slightly higher. Occasionally, I would include someamethyst clusters in the load, and these would come out as nice citrineclusters. I never put them outdoors in the sun, but they never fadedindoors, and we never had any complaints of fading from our customers. Inmy opinion, the color will not fade, at least with the material I used.But it is easy enough to try on your own material. If you have a burnoutfurnace for casting, you could use it for the experiment. The reason forpacking the stones in the sand is to provide a thermal mass to preventsudden temperature changes that could damage the stones.
CITRINE : If the Stone is pale Amethyst in the beginning,it may still go to a darkCitrine.It depends the amount of iron in the stone.the progression ofcolor change is as follows.Purple then it changes to White and as you gohigher in temperature it changes again to Citrine.So a light Amethystmay be just faded by light,heat exposure or time.You may be seeing it inthe "in-between stage" On some mines a good indicator of it's Citrine Potential is theamout of Brown color in the stone.On fresh unheated material,the rule ofthumb is the darker the brown,the darker the Citrine.And if the Brown isin a Zone.After heating just the Brown Zone can come dark Citrine,whilethe Amethyst goes to light Citrine or white.Real pro's will saw offdarker Zones of Amethyst only,before heating the Brown Zone. There are exceptions to this Brown rule.For example Rio Grande doSul,Brazil Amethyst will show no Brown but can turn to a darkCitrine.There they are experienced as to which mine contains a high ironcontent,regardless of the starting body color. Citrine can be considered a stable color in that the heating processgoes up to 500C.Unless exposed to temperatures higher than this theywill remain stable.But can fade over time in direct sunlight like anyQuartz.*I am in the business of heat treatments and irradiations.I offer theseservices,but also,if you pay the shipping back and forth will analyseyour roughs for treating potential for free.If you are certain oflocation of origin,and can accurately describe the color zoning,I couldgive an idea just by E-mail or Fax.I would also add their are quite alot of treatments on Quartz that are not published.I can offer serviceor consulting in this area.*
CITRINE : From: ()Subject: Re: Amethyst to Citrine? Newsgroups: Date: 1997/03/19 Dear Stephanie,You may be able to change the colour of the stone, but you cant change thechemical makeup. Eventually, despite what you may hear, either treatmentwill reverse itself. It may take years, but the colour will fade. Amy'sare often heat treated to enhance the colour. It is near impossible topurchase a non-irradiated or heat treated coloured stone these days.Almost all coloured stones are now "enhanced" by some method. Because I'm sure you're wondering now, Yes, this does raise MANYcontriversies within the industry. If you walk into your average jewelrystore and ask the salesperson if thier stones are enhanced, most will notbe able to give an honest answer because they just dont know.
CITRINE : I have a question. I read somewhere that amethysts, if iradiated or heatedsomehow can be made to change to citrines. Is this tidbit of alchemytrue?? If so, how do you do it. I have a large, pale, cut amethyst that Iwould prefer as a citrine.From: ()Subject: Re: Amethyst to Citrine? Newsgroups: Date: 1997/03/17 Stephanie wrote:Hi Stephanie,It is true that some amethyst can be heat treated to turn amyinto citrine. I would say that quite a bit of the citrine yousee offered for sale, is/was amethyst at one time. Not all amywill turn and I will include the url of a detailed heat discussionby dealer/importer Mark Liccini found on his pages. He has a verycomplete explination. Now it is(or may be) impossible for you toknow where your amy was mined unless you were told at the time youbought it. So you run the risk of, 1.) paying the heat-treater andit not turning 2.) putting the stone through this heating treatmentand due to internal flaws, having it braek apart into many pieces.
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