Emery (mineral)
Encyclopedia
Emery is a very hard rock type used to make abrasive powder. It largely consists of the mineral corundum
Corundum
Corundum is a crystalline form of aluminium oxide with traces of iron, titanium and chromium. It is a rock-forming mineral. It is one of the naturally clear transparent materials, but can have different colors when impurities are present. Transparent specimens are used as gems, called ruby if red...

 (aluminium oxide
Aluminium oxide
Aluminium oxide is an amphoteric oxide with the chemical formula 23. It is commonly referred to as alumina, or corundum in its crystalline form, as well as many other names, reflecting its widespread occurrence in nature and industry...

), mixed with other species such as the iron-bearing spinel
Spinel
Spinel is the magnesium aluminium member of the larger spinel group of minerals. It has the formula MgAl2O4. Balas ruby is an old name for a rose-tinted variety.-Spinel group:...

s hercynite
Hercynite
Hercynite is a spinel mineral with the formula FeAl2O4.It occurs in high-grade metamorphosed iron rich argillaceous sediments as well as in mafic and ultramafic igneous rocks. Due to its hardness it also is found in placers....

 and magnetite
Magnetite
Magnetite is a ferrimagnetic mineral with chemical formula Fe3O4, one of several iron oxides and a member of the spinel group. The chemical IUPAC name is iron oxide and the common chemical name is ferrous-ferric oxide. The formula for magnetite may also be written as FeO·Fe2O3, which is one part...

, and also rutile
Rutile
Rutile is a mineral composed primarily of titanium dioxide, TiO2.Rutile is the most common natural form of TiO2. Two rarer polymorphs of TiO2 are known:...

 (titania
Titanium dioxide
Titanium dioxide, also known as titanium oxide or titania, is the naturally occurring oxide of titanium, chemical formula . When used as a pigment, it is called titanium white, Pigment White 6, or CI 77891. Generally it comes in two different forms, rutile and anatase. It has a wide range of...

). Industrial emery may contain a variety of other minerals and synthetic compounds such as magnesia, mullite
Mullite
Mullite or porcelainite is a rare silicate mineral of post-clay genesis. It can form two stoichiometric forms 3Al2O32SiO2 or 2Al2O3 SiO2. Unusually, mullite has no charge balancing cations present...

, and silica.

It is black or dark gray in colour, less dense than translucent-brown corundum with a specific gravity
Specific gravity
Specific gravity is the ratio of the density of a substance to the density of a reference substance. Apparent specific gravity is the ratio of the weight of a volume of the substance to the weight of an equal volume of the reference substance. The reference substance is nearly always water for...

 of between 3.5 and 3.8. Because it can be a mixture of minerals, no definite Mohs hardness
Mohs scale of mineral hardness
The Mohs scale of mineral hardness characterizes the scratch resistance of various minerals through the ability of a harder material to scratch a softer material. It was created in 1812 by the German geologist and mineralogist Friedrich Mohs and is one of several definitions of hardness in...

 can be assigned: the hardness of corundum is 9 and that of some spinel-group minerals is near 8, but the hardness of others such as magnetite is near 6.

Crushed or naturally eroded emery (known as black sand) is used as an abrasive
Abrasive
An abrasive is a material, often a mineral, that is used to shape or finish a workpiece through rubbing which leads to part of the workpiece being worn away...

 — for example, on an emery board, as a traction enhancer in asphalt
Asphalt
Asphalt or , also known as bitumen, is a sticky, black and highly viscous liquid or semi-solid that is present in most crude petroleums and in some natural deposits, it is a substance classed as a pitch...

 and tarmac
Tarmac
Tarmac is a type of road surface. Tarmac refers to a material patented by Edgar Purnell Hooley in 1901...

 mixtures, or as used in mechanical engineering as emery cloth
Emery cloth
Emery cloth is a type of abrasive that has emery glued to a cloth backing. It is commonly used in metalworking by hand. A finer, less commonly seen grade has a paper backing instead.-Grades:...

.

The Greek island of Naxos used to be the main source of this industrially important rock type. It has been mined on the eastern side of Naxos for well over two thousand years until recent times. However, demand for emery has decreased with the development of sintered carbide and oxide materials as abrasives.

Grain numbers

Grain numbers define the size of the grain. The number corresponds to the number of meshes per linear inch in the grading sieve
Sieve
A sieve, or sifter, separates wanted elements from unwanted material using a woven screen such as a mesh or net. However, in cooking, especially with flour, a sifter is used to aerate the substance, among other things. A strainer is a type of sieve typically used to separate a solid from a liquid...

. Common numbers are, from coarse to fine: 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 24, 30, 36, 40, 46, 54, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, 120, 150, 180, and 200. Grains finer than 200 are known as "flour" and are designated by the letters: CF, F, FF, FFF, FFFF, and PCF or SF (coarse to fine). Note that the grades for flour are not standardized, so the same grade grains from different sources may differ in size slightly.
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