FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[Ron Swanson]

Hey everybody, glad to have found your forum here. I'm a woodworker and use various crushed materials including soapstone as inlay substrate in some of my pieces, and I thought I'd venture out into the mineralogy world to see if I might find some advice. I'm in search of new color tones of the blue and green type but I'm unfamiliar with what minerals might be of use to me. Would you have any suggestions for what minerals I might take a look at for future potential color sources? Dark / solid hues tend not to work as well with the natural wood colors, but the medium hues certainly do. A material need not be as soft as soapstone to be useful, just crushable (if that's even a word).

Thanks, I'm all ears!

[alfredo]

Welcome to the Forum, Ron. What are you using for crushing the minerals, and what size particles do you want to end up with? That will have some influence on which minerals might be suitable.

[lluis]

Maybe late in answering, and with all due respects to Alfredo, I understand that you simply asked for somehow soft minerals in pastel colours...

If so, there are many... Some in green and blue (samplesite, chrysocolla,....) and in other colors....
Maybe taking a look at Mindat and looking for rarity (if rare, well, not a good idea..) and hardness, you could take a good approach to what may be used...

With best wishes

LLuís

[Josele]

A quick look on the Internet gives some interesting results:
- Making pigments or paint from minerals
- Mineral Pigments in Archaeology: Their Analysis and the Range of Available Materials
- How Natural Pigments and Dyes Have Been Used in Art