Cracked Tahitian Pearls

[Blue-Island]

Thank you for that post. Does "stoup" mean the same thing as tridacna gigas shell?

Yes Caitlin, I google translated the word "b?nitier" from french to english and it came up with "stoup" which is a tridacna gigas shell. I didn't know its' scientific name. In French Polynesia, we are calling these animals "Pahua", and they are tasty! Here is one way to cook them! http://www.peche.pf/spip.php?article181

Although, this animal is protected by the washington convention, the fishing of this mollusc is common in French Polynesia, not at an industrial scale but at a private scale. If you were to tell them so, I'm pretty sure they would say "but there are plenty of them in the lagoon!", and they got a point...

 

[BrendaKY]

Very interesting

 

[Pearling Technologies]

Definitely not Bironite, my money is on clam. When processing clam shell into nuclei, they are fantastic to work with as the shell is hard and they don’t lose shape as easily as mussel shell nuclei during processing. The down side is in the drilling as there is no organic matter to act as a ‘lubricate’ for drilling. Clam beads can be drilled reasonably easily if you know they’re clam and set up, but inside a pearl you never know. Mussel shell is also not uni-directional so drilling with the structure can be easier than drilling against the structure. Bironite has a uni-directional structure.