All of our Mexican fire agate cabochons are mirror polished - the best in Calvillo. Besides having the most experienced cutters, our miners have an eye for the absolute best quality stones to produce these excellent cabochon specimens that can be seen throughout our web site. Fire agate from Mexico is still the best material in the world, there are other mines with good fire, but they don't match the hardness of depth of high grade fire that is still only found in Aguascalientes, México.

HIGH GRADE CABOCHONS           AFFORDABLE CABOCHONS           RARE IMPERIAL GRADE           WINDOW POLISHED SPECIMENS
RAW SPECIMENS & ROUGH LOTS          MINER SPECIALS          AGATA DE FUEGO (Calvillo Mining Info)

		Fire Agate Specimens & Rough Lots

Fire agate is found only in Mexico and the American Southwest (mainly in Arizona), the Mexican specimens seem to be of a harder mix than it's northern counterparts. This may be because of a heavy quartz mixed with the chalcedony, so thinks our miner / pulidor (polisher) of 20 years in the town of Calvillo.

Fire Agate is thought to be formed when hot water saturated with colloidal silica and iron oxide and seeps into cavities in regular rock below the earth's surface. When it begins to cool, chalcedony with iron oxide begins to grow on available surfaces. The solution grows layers of silica and iron oxide, colors are then formed by the mineral impurities in the silica.

The alternating silica and iron oxide layers are called "schiller". The schiller layers are small enough that light passing through them, forming an interference of colors known as fire. As the iron oxide in the solution runs out, colorless chalcedony continues to grow and produces the brown and white look of fire agate rough. The micro-thin layers in the brown iron oxide material, diffracts light, back to the eye in rainbow of colors and patterns that create brilliant bubbles and layer sheets of red, green, yellow, blue and the rare violet iridescent colors of fire.