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I have worked some quartz based stone.
Aluminum oxide (AO) belts will sand quartz like amethyst, what I use and the silicone carbide wet-dry sandpaper will polish out most stones including granite. AO (corundum) is what rubies and sapphire actually is. I use a diamond sharpening stone to touch up my carbide drill bits, but it is a tedious chore. The mohs scale of hardness is what they use to measure hardness of semi-precious stones. A diamond is 10 and sapphire is 9 but it is an exponential bell curve. There is a super diamond called nanocrystalline diamond that's harder.
Fluorite is a beautiful stone, but softer than quartz gems and is softer than ironwood. I collected gemstones btw and did for years and then was ripped off by a "family" member. Turquoise isn't that hard and I recently found out I can cut it with my jeweler's saw. A simple round inlay shouldn't be too hard to do. I've never actually used recon stone except for some malachite on a knife handle. Look up cabochons and how to make them.
Now if you go grinding any type of stone it needs to be kept wet. Go to WebMD and search Silicosis for why.
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