You would be surprised at what you can find in Colorado pegmatites regarding micros. I have found lovely micro fluorite cubes on top of amazonite, on top of smoky quartz and also included in smoky quartz. As you probably know most siderite crystals have been completely altered to goethite/hematite ...

I found out that the specific kiln where the specimens came from has no glazed fired parts since the temperature is so high. I also found out that we use silicon carbide bars to space the firing bricks and plates for air flow during the firing. Sometimes you see glassy silica bubbles form on the ...

At work we have huge gas fired kilns that are used for a wide variety of ceramics. They typically go in on a rail track loaded on fire bricks. They are usually unglazed and the only glaze we use is plain white. Typical temperatures are around 3600 degrees F or 1982 degrees C for 60 hours. The fire ...

As a garnet collector, there is not enough matrix to really pin down the location of this cluster. Your best bet is to identify the white crystals and see if there is an association with what appears to be andradite crystals for some South Africa location as it looks like you have submitted photos ...

Thanks for confirming my tentative ID of titanite. I did find later an USGS publication of the geology of the Monarch and Tomichi mining districts that does mention titanite at least for igneous rocks. Next time I am in the area I will try to locate more of that "dirty" marble to try and find ...

Last view of large crystal with more contrast

Other views and crystals Photo Photo

Some more photos of the unknowns. Photo Photo

A few years ago I saved a chunk of dirty marble with a barely exposed crystal that I collected at Missouri Hill at the site of an old marble quarry. The main collecting interest at Missouri Hill are the clear quartz crystals and the goethite after pyrite pseudomorphs mainly located above the ...

I would think that most citrines created by a forest fire would be from smoky quartz as they are a lot more common than amethysts. Apparently some light colored heat treated citrines come from smoky quartz. I assume not every smoky quartz crystal can be heat treated that way. It is not too ...

Just an amazing creation and great photo as well! It is always interesting to see the result of crystal growth experiments outside the usual minerals chosen. If I read the description right, they were trying to determine the highest possible concentration of some trace elements found in many ...

Can you post some more photos at different angles? It almost looks like some sort of fired clay artifact. I would not break it as it really has an interesting shape even if it is just an ordinary concretion. The spikes look like they could been used as caltrops although the size and material ...

If you have a regular microscope that has screw holes for attaching things like ring lights, you can try using a metal broom holder clip and attach the usb microscope that way. It should also work for any screw holes that are on the stage. This allows you to use the much larger and stable ...

Possibly Kennesaw Peninsula Michigan?

I recently acquired a sample of grossular garnet for my collection. I believe I have the correct location for the specimen but Mindat does not directly show the location as seen on the label. It seems that the location is described differently due to the language. The label states Fluss Wiluja, ...

Like TomV said, I would trim it too for a better display. Start with that natural line on the left side. I would then see if it is possible to trim away the remaining matrix above and to the left of the large crystal in the middle of your first photo. It looks like there may be a nice cavity in ...

While browsing the photos added yesterday this specimen really jumped out at me. The mineral ID is 7QM-ELF. Is there any theory how such a specimen could be formed? The photo isn't quite at a high enough resolution to make out the details but some of the crystals have extraordinarily thin ...

I have to echo the others here. Those are some really good crystals and depending on the size, could be considered a notable new find worthy of recording. I would encourage you to get back to that area and try to get more specimens, especially on matrix and for the loose stuff, perhaps screening. ...

At the club meeting last night someone brought this nice dendrite example from the Finch Mine AZ. The specimen measures about 5 inches across. The mine is well known for the quartz coated wulfenites of which you can see one slightly center right. The background is a blue grey drusy quartz ...

Seeing the post on star ekanite got me to wondering how many minerals are known to display star asterism? I know that in theory a mineral in the hexagonal or isometric crystal system can show this if they have enough included minute oriented crystals (usually rutile) and translucent enough to see ...

My guess is that the yellow stuff is probably stuff that was deposited after a too long acid bath to clean the specimen. There is a reason why people should use a buffer or distilled water after acid treatment as dissolved material will tend to precipitate on specimens left too long in an acid ...

My first thought was Wrangell Island but the matrix looks far too greenish to be the typical Wrangell schist matrix. Plus the garnets don't seem to show the typical crystal structure from Wrangell. If the greenish matrix is epidote it could very well be from Prince of Wales as there are skarns ...

At the recent Colorado School of Mines Geology Museum open house during the minerals shows going on that week I came across this curved crystal display in one of the new cases. It is Microcline with curved crystal growth habit from the Pikes Peak Batholith area in Teller County Colorado. The ...

If your Canon body is not full frame consider matching an older macro full frame lens with a true macro teleconverter (not a regular teleconverter). You will have increased working distance compared to just extension tubes and the sharpness isn't really affected by the extra glass in the converter ...

It is almost certainly hematite as others have said. If you don't mind chipping off a piece you can make it more magnetic by subjecting it to a blow torch flame. A little ID trick that I got from one of the earlier Pough mineral field guides. I wouldn't subject the entire specimen to that ...

I have come across a possible siderite cluster from my claim near Crystal Peak in Teller County Colorado. Most siderite that I have seen from the Lake George/Crystal Peak area are hematite pseudomorphs after siderite. These however seem to be unaltered having solid yellow platy discoidal shapes ...

I scored a 4. It does help to blow up the screen so the color bars take up all the space. There is a big difference between balanced and eco mode on my laptop screen. I suspect I would score even better on a calibrated monitor.

It's not entirely impossible that this is from the Unaweep area. It may have come from older (perhaps a lot older) material than that currently seen in the market which is in the form of pale purple druzy crystals typically associated with green fluorite. When we had the 75th anniversary ...

Thanks for showing where to search at Rocks and Mineral magazine. The MSA site search seems to be broken at the moment however for the small format stuff.

Thanks for the two suggestions so far. I bookmarked the Collector's Guide book and will try to see if I can locate a library copy of the Rouse book as it seems to be quite expensive and I need to see what it is like before making a blind purchase of it. I see that Mineralogical Record has an ...

I already have the ExtraLapis English issue of "Garnet: Great Balls of Fire". But I want even more material regarding garnets. Any books or articles that you can recommend for a garnet collector? Issues of magazines or gem trade related books would be nice to know so I can track them down.

The texture looks somewhat like those seen in ice candles which are typically made with a paper milk carton filled with ice and hot candle wax poured into the carton and allowed to cool off. So perhaps there was a campfire with wet matted straw which may have acted as a wick to absorb the molten ...

It reminds me of bronze sculptures except in some other metal due to the color. For some reason I see the scale of the men as only a few inches tall like the green army men in the Toy Story movies.

One thing for sure, it isn't limonite as it is opaque and the crystal shown in your photos is translucent. Do you have a photo of the dried out shell of the crystal? It almost looks like it could be sulphur but you mentioned it dried to colorless. It will be interesting to see what others think ...

While I can't help you with a location for your garnet, I do have a rather nice spessartine garnet from the Scripps collection labeled simply Baja California. I wonder if it came from the Mina la Verde pegmatite? As you mentioned the mineral data for Baja California is pretty incomplete. Just ...

Check out the diyphysics.com blog. They have two articles on constructing the gamma-ray scintillation probes to work with the CDV700 Pro and Ludlum geiger counters.

As a garnet collector, I'd love to see some photos of the garnets you collected! I'd go with carnelian as well as the bottom half seems to have solid translucent color. I don't see any obvious sharp edges on the top half as it seems more bubbly which would also agree with a carnelian nodule.

While I haven't gone collecting in California at all, there is at least one other tourmaline fee dig site in the San Diego County area. The one for Oceanside Mine and the webpage for that is The Oceanview Mine--Dig For Gems!. A couple of years ago I was looking up ore bags for at home sifting ...

Van, I'm looking forward to seeing the other videos in the series. From what I can see only part one is up so far. Of interest, the video is well done and turning on the automatic captions has much better text than the usual unrelated gibberish. Sure there are goofy words here and there but ...

The calcite could be from La Junta Colorado or a place near there as I have collected some that looks quite similar in appearance to yours with two generations of calcite.

I noticed that you have chosen to mount both the camera and bellows separately to the stand. Were you getting too many vibrations using only the bellows attachment? I see you also chose to move the specimen in the stacking which is also what I plan to do with my setup which will use a hand ...

For those without access to the Weather Channel on their TV, the website now has the first full episode for streaming. I think watching it online is a lot better as you don't have to deal with the constant commercial breaks. I was able to see two other episodes the other weekend during a visit ...

I'm not sure what resolution you are shooting for but it is my understanding that you can get the same effect as shutterless mode by using the video recording mode on various cameras. You would have to deconstruct the video file into linked image files. The disadvantage would be in smaller ...

I have been busy with stacking photos and I believe a better approach to comparing photos for checking alignment, sharpness, and so on would be to run them through a fast slide viewer program. For small details, I would crop the same area of detail for each photo so it will be easier to see any ...

Steve Stuart Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Tried to e-mail Scott Kleine at Great Basin > Minerals and it came back as undeliverable. There > appears to be three specimens of similar > association: mine, Hal's and Rich Dale's. Anyone > have Scott Kleine's ...

You might try contacting Scott Kleine of Great Basin Minerals as he specializes in Nevada minerals. I'm not sure what his current contact information is as his website is very out of date. I did talk to him in his dealer room at the last Denver show though. There is also apparently a very ...

Here's another favorite find of mine from 2012. It's a zircon crystal of about 11 mm on the longest edge. It comes from the Eureka Tunnel near St Peters Dome Colorado. It is a single shot photo taken with my Pentax K-01 and a 50 mm macro lens.

Here's one of my favorite finds for 2012. It is a nicely terminated amazonite crystal of about 28.6 mm on the longest length and it is mostly coated with what is probably goethite or some other oxide and on top of that are hundreds of very sharp pale purple fluorite cubes! This is from my claim ...

It looks very much like what is called artichoke quartz. It's not a perfect match but in nature you usually don't get perfection. It shares much of the same features so I would put it in that category. If it cleans up pretty well with super iron out, I think it may look quite striking, ...

My favorite of the day is this self collected pyrite ball from Holcim Quarry, near Florence, Colorado. It measures about 19 mm on the longest axis. Some gamma and saturation correction was added to make the background darker and show more detail on the faces. Taken on a homemade macro stand with ...