Yellow Sapphire Stone Details Information

Yellow Sapphire has become a favorite in jewelry because it's available in so many colour nuances, ranging from a mild lemon yellow to a completely saturated vibrant yellow to a deep orangey-yellow. Yellow sapphire also has a special place in Vedic astrology, in which pukhraj is one of the 9 sacred stone.

Sapphire is among the most crucial of all the loose colored gemstones and comes in a wide variety of colors: blue, pink, yellow, green, purple, orange, padparadscha, blue green, orange-yellow, colour change, along with black color. Sapphire of all colours have become especially popular for engagement rings, because sapphire is durable enough to wear daily.
The prices and worth of yellow sapphire differ depending upon the size, quality and treatment of the individual gemstone. Unheated yellow sapphires with good color saturation and superb clarity would be the rarest and most valuable, particularly in bigger dimensions, and much sought after by stone collectors. Most yellow sapphires are heat treated to improve the color and clarity. Additionally, many yellow sapphires in the marketplace have been treated with beryllium, in a process known as lattice diffusion. This process produces vivid yellows and oranges.
Why Purchase Loose Gemstones Instead of Pre-Set Jewelry?
There are many reasons, but essentially it boils down to value and choice.

When buying your bead loose instead of a pre-set stone, you can be certain you are getting the best deal for the money. Loose gemstones are less costly, a better value, and you can really see what you are paying for. The most important part of getting the right price and locating the very best value is to see what you are obtaining. A jewelry setting will conceal the inclusions inside a stone, and can deepen or brighten its color. With a loose stone you can much more easily inspect the gem and see it for what it really is. This manner it is possible to get a better idea of its true value and make certain you're spending a reasonable price.
The second benefit of buying a loose gemstone is choice. You are free to pick the exact color, cut, form and wide variety of the stone for the remainder of your dreams, make sure it yellow gold, white gold, silver or platinum; prong place or bezel set. You can experience the joy of creating your very own, one-of-a-kind jewelry design. Choose from a number of jewelry settings and styles to make an entirely original presentation that will perfectly fit your individual gemstone and will likely be as distinctive as you are!
Yellow sapphire's appealing color is just one reason for this bead's popularity. As with all sapphire, it's also extremely durable, using a hardness of 9 on the Mohs scale. Sapphire has a specific gravity of 4.00, a refractive index of 1.76 - 1.78, and birefringence of 0.008. The refractive index (RI), measured with a refractometer, is an indication of the amount light rays are bent by a mineral. Birefringence is the difference between the maximum and minimum RI. When birefringence is high, light rays reflect off different areas of the back of a stone causing an apparent doubling of the spine aspects when seen through the front aspect.
Most jewels have a crystalline structure. The number of axes, their span, and their angle to each other ascertain the machine to which a crystal goes. The gem yellow sapphire stone is classified as with a trigonal crystalline structure since its three planes of symmetry and four axes. Three axes are at 60 degrees to each other at precisely the exact same plane. The fourth axis is vertical and unequal in length to another three. The form of a sapphire's crystals is based upon the selection and locality. Sapphires may have an irregular or a conchoidal fracture but no real cleavage. The quantity of light reflected in the surface of a gemstone is its luster and yellow sapphires have a glassy (vitreous) luster rather than the waxy, oily, or resinous luster of other stone.

Color
Shade is the single most significant element in deciding the worth of a yellow sapphire. Really, the color of a sapphire is much more important than its clarity. Sapphires are rarely clean and even very expensive stones could be marginally included. Subtle differences in colour can make great variations in valuations of fine gemstones. Fine loose gemstones of excellent color and texture are always valuable and rare. Highly saturated medium or medium dark yellow tones are greatest, yellow sapphires which are too dark or too light are worth considerably less. Beautiful colors include bright lemon yellow, vivid yellow and abundant Ceylon yellow. However, sapphire gemstones come in many colors such as pink, yellow, orange, black, green, color-change, purple, purple, pale blue, and the infrequent orange-pink Padparadscha sapphire gems. Padparadscha comes in the Sinahalese word meaning "lotus colour". Sapphires aside from pink, blue, yellow, green and orange sapphire are often called"natural fancy-color sapphire". Red colors result from traces of chromium. So pink sapphire and ruby are the same gemstones with only different levels of chromium.

Cut
Ovals, rounds, cushions and emeralds are the most common cuts for yellow sapphire, as a result of normal shape of sapphire rough. Other popular sapphire shapes include figurines, briolettes, hearts and marquises. Star sapphires are cut into the cabochon shape in order to develop and correctly display the celebrity effect. Fibers or fibrous cavities inside a star sapphire reflect the light that causes a celebrity to look within the stone. A six-ray star sapphire contains three sets of parallel fibers. Skilled cutters can occasionally make a 12-ray star sapphire but they're rare.

Treatments
Traditional heating is widely used for yellow sapphire and is a recognized enhancement process which can improve the transparency and color of these stones. Techniques vary from simply throwing gems to a fire to be cooked, to using sophisticated electric or gas furnaces at particular pressures and atmospheric problems. The treatment is permanent and warmed stones do not require any special care.
New remedies which are used to produce blue, pink, orange and yellow sapphire stones are more controversial. This new treatment is a heat-diffusion procedure that's secure and may or may not completely penetrate the stone. The color is accomplished through a process which includes the addition of foreign components to achieve the desired color change.
AJS Gems fully discloses all treatments to our gemstones.

Sources
For decades, the basaltic lava stones and river sands and gravels of Burma, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Ceylon, Pailin Cambodia are significant sources of excellent quality stone sapphires. Other sources of free sapphire are Australia, Brazil, Kashmir, Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Montana, USA.
Nowadays however, there's a new and important source of gem quality sapphires in the marketplace - Madagascar. Madagascar produces sapphires in most of the favorite colours, including blue, black, yellow, green and pink. The caliber of the best Madagascar stones is outstanding and they are currently as highly regarded as Ceylon sapphire in the global market.

Madagascar
Madagascar, a large island country off the south-west coast of the African continent, became the latest news from the prized gem industry. With just a few years of development, many new mine sources began producing commercial to top gem quality sapphires the likes of which had not been seen for more than a century.
Buyers from around the world flocked into the new finds. Once tiny villages of a couple of dozen mud huts shortly became rampant west boomtowns with 10's of thousands of new inhabitants. The majority of the newcomers were itinerant miners looking to strike it rich in the pay dirt from their Madagascar wilderness. Dirt poor farmers can become instantly wealthy by local standards with the find of just one exceptional demanding sapphire crystal.
These new African American currencies are a blessing to sapphire traders anyplace on the planet. There is now a completely different range of lovely blue gemstones available to gem traders, artisans and collectors, many of which are often compared with Ceylon sapphire. The colour contrasts, clarity, evenness and innocence of colour sometimes rival the best of Burma and even the elusive sapphires of Kashmir.
The fantastic advantage to modern day sapphire fans is the relative availability of Madagascar jewels at affordable rates. Madagascar has made the dream of having a Kashmir look-alike possible to a broad range of gem lovers around the globe.
Ilakaka and Sakaraha are located a little south of the island Madagascar close to a location called Toliara or Tulear. Proceed past the desert southwards and you will reach a place called Andranondambo. Known at one time as Fort Dauphin, Tolanaro is a metasomatic sapphire mining area for blue sapphires at which in 1994 the first sapphires of gem quality were discovered.
This island has its heritage in the mining arena. The island is named Gem Island or"Ratna Dweepa" due to the large variety of gems found here. You'll find everything from peridot into moonstones into garnets and topaz. Today Sri Lanka is best known for it's the sapphires known as the Ceylon Blue, and the sapphire named Padparadscha that has a gorgeous and one of a kind orange pink pastel delicate colour, quite much like the Lotus flower found on this island. The traditional Ceylon mines are near Ratnapura which is situated southeast of Colombo about 100kms away.

Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka is one of the world's largest sources of fine quality blue sapphire. It's a place where one can regularly find excellent gems over the 100 carat mark. A number of the renowned big sapphires in museums across the world came from this particular diamond rich tropical island. Sri Lanka is also a very well known source for fine quality celebrity sapphires.
The classic"cornflower blue" is what Sri Lanka is famous for. The finest of this sapphire from Ceylon are an incredibly even and extreme pure blue color, with a high degree of saturation. This bright and moderate toned color of blue is highly prized throughout the world, and is considered to be far superior to the often overly dark and inky colors generally found in Australia and Thailand.
The region know as Ratnapura sits right in the center of the gem producing area of Sri Lanka. Surrounding this city one can observe hundreds of small to big hand dug pits in which the gemming (Sri Lankan term for stone mining) is going on. The government has set a whole ban on mechanized mining, thereby assuring a tight supply, stable rates, and a source of income for all future generations of inferior native laborers.

Burma
Burma, that is today named Myanmar, has several significant locations that produce sapphire. The most famous is the Mogok gem tract that has a rich history of production dating back a few hundred decades. Sapphires from Burma weren't known because of their superior quality until the 1950's, and their value and demand has improved dramatically.
However, just what is it that produces blue sapphires out of Burma so superior to stone from any other site? In visual terms it is what is known as colour saturation. Burmese sapphires have a number of the most highest concentration of blue color potential. The only way to properly understand this would be to observe the best of Burmese sapphires side by side with all the top from any other source on earth.

USA
From the U.S., the Yogo Gulch at Judith Basin Co. has produced selection, deep blue Sapphire crystals. Not far in the Yogo Gulch, near Helena, waterworn Sapphires stones have been located at the Missouri River during its length in Lewis and Clark County. Montana is also the claim to a few other localities: Salesville, Gallatin Co., Stone Creek, Granite Co., and Cottonwood Creek, Deer Lodge Co.. Massive deposits of Emery were functioned near Peekskill, Westchester Co., New York.
Rubies can be found in the U.S. in the Cowee Creek District, Macon Co., North Carolina.
The creation of gem-quality sapphires from the USA is not new or recent. Furthermore, corundum crystals, from which star sapphires are cut, are found in Beaverhead and Madison Counties. Additionally, in 1895, the first sapphires were created from the Cowee Valley at Macon County, North Carolina. But until very recently, with the exclusion of Yogo Gulch material, the commercial gemstone business has had limited interest in U.S. sapphires. --Mining of Yogo Gulch sapphires began in a year of their discovery in 1895 and continued for 39 decades. In 1923, the mine was damaged so badly by rain that it couldn't efficiently recover. Other efforts are made to commercially mine the residue, but to date, each of these efforts have ended in economic failure.
Yogo's are exceptional among the world's sapphires. They lack the color zoning so prevalent in different sapphires, their uniform"corn-flower blue" color is natural (not the consequence of heat-treating), and their clarity is high. These attributes position them among the world's greatest sapphires. Unfortunately, the rough is both small and flat, wafer-like in form. The majority of the pieces or crystals of crystals recovered are too small to be cut, most are less than one carat and finds of over 2 carats are rare. Reportedly, the most significant crystal was a 19 carat stone found in 1910 which has been cut into an 8-carat stone. The dimensions of the cut stones greatly limit the marketplace for Yogo's, they're beautiful, small, quite expensive sapphires.
Presently, Yogo sapphires are produced from three sources: Rancor lnc., generates material from the original Yogo Gulch deposit; Vortex Mining generates from a recently discovered extension of the Yogo dike; and the substance is generated by individuals from independently owned lots in Sapphire Village. The initial two manufacturers market only cut stones and finished goods and the next is comprised basically of hobbyists.
Historically, the number of sapphires produced from the Missouri River and Stone Creek areas greatly exceeded that by Yogo Gulch. However, the worth of the substance produced from Yogo, reported to be in excess of $30 million, is considerably greater than that of the combined values of the other areas. This relationship is rapidly changing.
The mixture of large volume commercial operations on the Missouri River, and to some extent Stone Creek, in addition to the arrival of effective heat-treating techniques for the material has greatly enhanced the acceptance of those sapphires by the gemstone industry. This enhanced acceptance has resulted in a considerable increase in the market for and value of U.S. sapphires. Unconfirmed reports have circulated that a package of pick 3- to 10-carat substance, suitable for heat-treating, was sold for up to $40,000 per kilogram. A more realistic cost for 3- to 10-carat, sorted mine-run material is in the range of $5,000 per kilogram, together with several kilograms of mine-run rough selling for $1,000 per kilogram.
The sapphires in the Missouri River gravels at Lewis and Clark County are a mixture of rough and pitted crystals showing well defined faces and completely rounded and smooth-surface highly stream worn pebbles. The majority of the material is light blue or blue, with heavy blue stones quite rare. Stones are also found in pastel blue, green, pink, pale reddish , purple, yellow, and orange. Material greater than 12.7 millimeters in diameter is rare.
Currently, there are seven surgeries on the Missouri River that commercially create sapphires and/or operate a dig-for-fee area. Not all of these may be active in any one year. It's the writer's perception that one surgery, now inactive, (a self-propelled floating 16-inch suction dredge) is for sale. The mines run from about the last week of May during the first week of September.
The Stone Creek sapphires are extremely much like the sapphires in the Missouri River but differ from the general form of these crystals. The stones are essentially crude hexagonal plates regarding the exact same measurement in width and height, with a much higher proportion of the substance being well-rounded water-worn pebbles. There seems to be of the larger sized (greater than 12.7 millimeters) material. Furthermore, it's reported that the Stone Creek material has a larger proportion of stones that may be heat-treated for color enhancement.
Through the last several years, there has been only a single producer on Stone Creek. The manufacturer operated both a commercial recovery plant and a fee recovery area. The fee retrieval area sold buckets of gravel for washing machine and offered, for a predetermined fixed fee, the outcome of one day's operation of the industrial wash plant. There is work underway which would lead to a second, much larger producer, starting an operation on a different deposit in the area. If things go as planned, the new performance on Stone Creek are the largest sapphire producer in Montana.
There are a number of locations involving Dillon in Beaverhead County and Ennis in Madison County that create lavender, grayish-lavender, bluish-gray, and grey hexagonal sapphire crystals which, when cut, produce stones which include four- or even six-ray stars. A minumum of one manufacturer from the Dillon area is currently advertising the availability of the type of material. The rest of the sapphire deposits in Montana appear to be controlled by individual amateurs.

Mythology
The myths, legends, beliefs, superstitions, traditions and symbolism connected with blue sapphire are many...
Legend has it that the first man to use Sapphire was Prometheus, the rival of Zeus, that took the gemstone from Cacaus, where he also stole fire from heaven for man.
Called the Gem of Heaven the ancient Persians thought Sapphires were a chip from the pedestal that supported the ground, which its reflections gave the sky its own colors. The British Crown Jewels are full of large blue sapphires, the symbol of pure and wise rulers.
The guardians of innocence, Sapphires symbolize truth, sincerity and faithfulness, and therefore are considered to bring peace, wisdom and joy to their owners. In ancient times it was believed that when the wearer of a Sapphire faced tough challenges, the jewel's power enabled them to find the right solution.
In India it was considered that a Sapphire immersed in water formed an elixir that may heal the sting of scorpions and snakes. Alternatively, if it were worn as a talisman pendant, it could protect the wearer from evil spirits.
The following legend is Burmese in source and highlights Sapphires' link with faithfulness:"Eons ago Tsun-Kyan-Kse, a gold haired goddess with Sapphire blue eyes, presided lovingly within the temple of Lao-Tsun. Everyday, the temple's main monk Mun-Ha, meditated prior to the gold goddess followed by his loyal companion, a green-eyed cat called Sinh. 1 day the temple was surrounded by a set of dreadful outlaws. When they threw Mun-Ha to the ground, Sinh jumped in the bandits, jumping up on his master's chest to protect him. The wrong doers fled screaming in panic , never to return and in gratitude for his guts, the gold goddess awarded Sinh together with her Sapphire blue eyes. For this day, Sinh's ancestors guard within the temple." The temple still stands and is inhabited by Siamese cat's with striking blue eyes (normally that breed has green eyes).
For centuries, Blue Sapphires were the favorite selection for engagement and wedding rings.