Here's Joe's photo of the package contents after they arrived with some jostling by USPS.  One or two stones must have crumbled in transit (the gravel in upper left of photo).  So USPS is rougher than my "will it break/crumble from twisting it in my hands" test.

Great, can't wait to see the finished product.  I've not played with moonstone before.

Big difference, huh?
I meant to look up the difference between "schiller" and "adularescence" before I got into this.
I'm not sure if both are applicable in this case?
Anyway, what we really want to know is, How do you cut this stuff to get that "shiny" face?
There are shiny surfaces all through it, and I will try to get more pics of that later,
but the real gemmy planes are running vertically in the separate layers of the stone
and you want to try and cut your gemstone roughly at that angle.
That is why it would be hard to cut a good gemstone and they would be rather small, but we'll give it a go, eventually.

You can see the planes within the layers in this next pic and a close-up just to be sure.

So here's where we are up to now.
Top and bottom views of cabs done to 1200 grit. No polish yet.

This pic is the bottom half smoothed down a little.  There is not much point
in trying to take it down any further because it is falling apart,
although you might end up with something if you tried.

Very pretty stuff!  Nice work Joe!

Nice!  Summer of 2014 I had my limited rebuilt lapidary equipment set up in the back yard.  Mostly I worked with harder material like unakite just trying to get the feel of the process of rough rounding and making a flat surface.  When I tried 2 or 3 moonstone chunks, it was similar experience -- hard to tell what will actually hold together and what you think looks solid might not be.  I gave up on the moonstone and went back to more solid stuff since I was just beginning.  Throughout and after winter "life got in the way" and all my equipment is still under tarps feeling neglected.  So I am grateful for Joe taking on this project and we all get to see how this material works under experienced hands.  Last Saturday I visited the Morefield Mine as they were closing for the day just to talk to Sam Dunaway and Nico, one of the employees/miner who I've talked to most often after Sam.  I brought some of the moonstone to show off (they were impressed) and gave them each some to work if they wanted.  Nico makes and sells jewelry (Facebook page "Twisting Nature") so I hope he does something with it.