Does /out/ like rock/mineral/gem hounding and going into old

>>634966

please respond

>>634966
I like rocks, but I don't like the idea of dying in a forgotten mine shaft.

>>635107

I wouldn't reccomend going solo, and there's usually information out there on what's stable and what's not if you talk to locals and/or the gem/mineral society of the area.

I've always had the pleasure of having great guides, but I would imagine even a solo trip up to a horizontal shaft to get at something near some sunlight, ontop of getting a beautiful hike, would be well worth it.

Geologist here. Post pics of your finds! I've been trying to locate collecting spots in my area for a long time and still haven't found too much good stuff.

File: WP_20150628_010.jpg (1MB, 2592x1944px) Image search: [Google]

1MB, 2592x1944px

>>634966
Somewhere in belgium, a 2 day camping trip last summer, the quarry was still in use but it was on the weekend so noone was there. We camped on the other side of the hill the quarry was built to, hiked over the hilltop in the morning and bumped into this, it was cool...

File: WP_20150628_012.jpg (977KB, 2592x1944px) Image search: [Google]

977KB, 2592x1944px

>>635166
This is the other pic, i have some other pics of the camping trip but its mostly us just screwing around in the forest or being high as fuck by the campfire

File: _20151104_123101.jpg (395KB, 1172x1056px) Image search: [Google]

395KB, 1172x1056px

>>635157
Geologist Anon, help me identify this, traded for it this last summer and still haven't met anyone who knew exactly what it was. I've posted several times on a few boards but nobody knows. I know it's nothing special, probably a $30 specimen high grade of something super common. Definitely not flourite or amazonite or anything easily guessable, I know a little about stones and the traveling rock peddlers I learn from often know their shit too.

Assuming its some sort of feldspar, specifically I don't know what though. It's completely terminated like that all around.

Where are you located? I travel around and RockHound on the side, there's great a stuff all over the states.

@ op, be careful about mines that are pay digs and well known, often times the mine owners seed their mines with crystals (quartz usually) that might not even be geographically relevant to the area. Tourmaline mines in socal are notorious for that.

File: _20151104_125936.jpg (889KB, 2304x1373px) Image search: [Google]

889KB, 2304x1373px

>>635234
Bumping with some Tourmaline. Not my favorite stuff but my customers are generally festie kids who know nothing about the crystals but identify the more common ones like Tourmaline, Labradorite, or Smoky Quartz or someone buying a rock for their festie kid. Otherwise it's mostly trading with fellow travelers and rock peddlers. For any future rock peddlers or peddlers in the making, always keep your box stocked with some common easily identifiable stuff. I recommend Labradorite and common terminated quartz, kids love it. Even better if you find some local quartz to sell in that state's hippy town. Practically every state has a hippy town.

The two big Tourmaline in this picture, the purple and the dark teal one that looks black, are probably worth over a hundred or two each to what we like to call "the right person"

mines are cool as fuck t b h f a m

>>635234
is it that pale green color or is that a light trick? could be some techtite, space debris

File: _20151123_114604.jpg (549KB, 1369x1440px) Image search: [Google]

549KB, 1369x1440px

>>635312
What? Naw fampai, its a light green color always, forest green with no clarity. You can shine a super bright light through it and the light only pierces a tiny fraction-no clarity.

But color aside, it's also completely terminated in every direction like an aragonite cluster. Tektite is just that, space junk/glass, and usually resembles a blob of ambiguous nothing. Definitely never naturally terminated. Tektite is also too black, Moldavite would probably fit the color better even then it's not clear enough and Moldavite doesn't terminate either given that it's tektite.


This picture is of a Natural Smoky Quartz with copper colored(or looking) rutile. The rutile is the tiny perfect lines that appear to be drawn on with a paint tool over the picture. In person it has a lot more to be seen, I'm really not sure how much this one is worth but I think it's a rather nice specimen.

>>635234
Have you tried fizzing it w/ dilute HCl? Do you know its hardness? Just off-hand it looks like a silicate of some sort, but might those ends be cleaved and not growth terminations? Are the shapes you see rhombohedral? Part of me also wants to think it's a calcite-like carbonate. That would work with it being light green, if it effervesced, and if it was showing rhombohedral cleavage. Moar pikshur pls

I am currently located in Wisco, but likely moving elsewhere for graduate school. Wisco has some nice pegmatite localities from some Proterozoic and early Paleozoic plutons. Mostly feldspar and smoky quartz in miarolitic cavities (vugs), but there's one complex pegmatite where you can find tourmaline, spodumene, lepidolite (pink mica) etc. Pretty cool stuff. Had some field work out in AZ in the Mojave, too, but couldn't collect due to time constraints. Wanted to find some fluorite and wulfenite.

>>635241
Gorgeous termination on the dark one. You said it's actually teal, so is that indicolite? Also, the rubellite is pretty too. Got a scale for those? Cool to see fellow rock/mineral enthusiasts on the 4chins

>>635323
Did you find that one yourself? Massive rutilated quartz is nice by itself, but a well-formed and terminated one like that is super cool. I gotta find more collecting spots lol

File: 20140821_144608.jpg (3MB, 4128x2322px) Image search: [Google]

3MB, 4128x2322px

Here's some variably coloured tourmalines from the Komolo Hills in northern Tanzania. None are gem quality though.

File: _20151103_170815.jpg (293KB, 1609x1067px) Image search: [Google]

293KB, 1609x1067px

>>635370
No, I haven't tried testing the hardness of it, I've never been good at a scratch test and I don't really have access to the things I need off hand to determine it otherwise, considering I'm out of my backpack.

I'm headed down to Quartzite and Tucson soon though, I got there late to quartzite last year but caught most of Tucson. Hopefully I'll figure it out there, largest gem show in the world at Tucson and a big rock and mineral thing in quartzite right before, should be fun again.

>>635374
I don't know, I'm wary about coming out and declaring it to be teal considering not every thinks its teal, but then again the world is cutthroat and the same people who failed to mention the teal face in it were the same ones who wanted to trade for it. I don't have a scale for weight if that's what you meant, really should get one for opals and Moldavite. I'll post a size scale in a moment. The Rubalite has a very soft termination on the top, it was this guy's pocket rock that he gave to me after I mentioned I'd gave away some super hard rouge/purple lapidolite that looked nothing like Micha. Easily the best lapidolite specimen I've ever seen, might I add.

File: _20151124_095659.jpg (436KB, 2101x1055px) Image search: [Google]

436KB, 2101x1055px

>>635378
No, I wish, it was a gift from a fellow traveling friend who'd been gifted it by some random guy coming out of Love of Ganesh on Haight.

Seriously if you ever get the chance go down to that store if you're there, the lady who runs it is super nice and has an excellent rock shop, she puts out super high grade AA stuff like that smoky in with the random low grade normal Smokey quartz, practically every day and sometimes not even in the right box. Its like a game for her. You'll be digging through the Golden Apatite and come across a double terminated Tibetan with a perfect double terminated phantom in it, you hold it up and ask her about it and she's all 'Ohhh that one very good one, no idea how it got there, for you one dollar though!'. She also gives the street kids deals on practically everything we buy there. Great woman.

>>635928
Yeah, looking more at it, I wouldn't be surprised if it's a carbonate of some sort. Awesome looking crystals, for sure. I will have to make my way down to the desert southwest again sometime to do some collecting/rock shop visiting.

>>635938
That's sweet, random rutilated smokies are never a bad thing lol. Also, that shop sounds like the bee's knees, I will have to take a gander if field work takes me down that way again.

Any other folks on /out/ do some good ol' fashioned rockhounding/mineral collecting? It's a grand time

There's a river I camp at that is one of the most quartz rich places I've ever seen. You can see big veins of it in all the boulders.

Question: how do you get those nice looking chunks you see in gemstores? How do I even get the quartz separated from rocks? It's the milky white kind if that matters.

Is it literally just a matter of smashing the fuck out of rocks and trying to chisel it out?

I want that fuckin' quartz it looks pretty.

>>636994
Those nice crystals inna store that are terminated come that way anon. They grow naturally in an underground environment that's perfect for their conditions, sort of like growing a plant except it's a perfectly geometrical shaped rock instead. You find the best specimens in the center of the quartz pockets/veins you see, but that doesn't mean your area grew terminated crystals. More likely, you'd find gold/silver deposits with the quartz veins and the terminated crystals in the ground or even on the surface if they might've been there. Still, if it's an area that people know about and camp at too, you have to imagine the thousands of people who have come through.

File: pic.jpg (228KB, 960x720px) Image search: [Google]

228KB, 960x720px

>>637010
Sorry for my lack of knowledge about this sort of stuff. I'm mostly just a bushcraft guy / hunter. Appreciate the info!

Anyway, my spot is a pretty much unknown area on a giant native reserve in remote Canada. The entire region is gated off and sees no public use. I have a key / access due to being on good terms with my local band (long story). That said, I have literally never seen signs of anyone else in this area in 4 years of frequent camping. I don't think anyone goes there.

I'm wondering now -- could this spot be a hidden goldmine (no pun)? Is quartz a good indicator of gold?

It's worth mentioning that last summer I panned this river and found a whole bunch of small flakes of gold beneath the black sand in my pan. I thought that was normal though because it was my first time trying and I had no idea what I was doing.

Pic related. My summer swimming hole.

File: pic2.jpg (222KB, 960x720px) Image search: [Google]

222KB, 960x720px

>>637014
Another photo I found. Sorry for the poor cellphone quality. You might be able to see the white veins I'm talking about a little bit in this photo. They are all over these large stones. I don't have any photos of the bigger sections, but they're all over the place. Some of them protrude out and are slightly translucent, but I haven't seen anything like what you get at a gem store. I always assumed those stones were cut to look that way.

>>637014
Quartz and gold can occur simultaneously, in a hydrothermal environment the two will crystallize at once. It isn't super common, but a lot of the primary gold found is found in quartz reef deposits. A lot of cool gold specimens are gold intercrystallized with massive quartz

>>637016
That is a gorgeous spot, all those old-ass Precambrian rocks in the Canadian shield. You're a lucky dude! Gotta make my way out there.

File: IMG_20151011_081944.jpg (1MB, 2048x1536px) Image search: [Google]

1MB, 2048x1536px

Found most of these, bought a few in Quartzite.

>>635241
>probably worth over a hundred or two each to what we like to call "the right person"
Not sure how to interpret that. Are they actually worth more or less?

File: IMG_2588.jpg (3MB, 3648x2736px) Image search: [Google]

3MB, 3648x2736px

>>637014
Like the other anon said, quartz and gold occur together. What I know about silver/gold ore in quartz I learned from Mark Twain's book 'Roughing it' which he actually gives a pretty good description of the silver trade and process in.

Basically there's a good chance you could find gold or silver in the veins of quartz there, and if there's a river that you already found gold in you should look up the method 'fanning' in order to figure out if there's a trickle of gold coming out the mountains.

Some of the crystals are cut that way, they're called raw facet quality or gem quality before cut and are usually measured in karats. The others are generally terminated, termination occurs in a perfect environment underground, like I said before. It's a pretty neat thing that we can't really recreate aside from some minor shit in labs that turn out looking faceted. Natural termination is some crazy shit.
>>638037
That means to the guy with 50 tourmaline on him worth several grand altogether they're probably worth less than 50 each, to 'the right person' who's never been to a real gem show or paid attention to stones, who mightve just been paid and laid and dosed on molly or whatever kids are taking-he might drop $200 dollars on the rubellite because it spoke to him.

Picture is some terminated peridot with rutile or whatever inclusion that is.

>>634966
I want to get into it but have no idea where to start looking. My dad is in another state, but he doesn't have any idea where to start either.

File: amethyst.jpg (295KB, 1280x960px) Image search: [Google]

295KB, 1280x960px

Got this large piece of amethyst from a friend who just recently returned from Austria. As visible in the photo there appear to be white stains/coating that I would like to get rid of. What is the best method to do it, and what materials I need?

How do I get into hunting up/collecting this stuff? I'm pretty noob when it comes out /out/ stuff. I just recently started lurking on this board, but this has really peaked my interest. Any tips for a beginner? I live in Southern Illinois, if that helps at all.

File: comment_6AiB76PeGQ1mnm99RDpPEPjl4nTQFw4J.gif (591KB, 245x185px) Image search: [Google]

591KB, 245x185px

>>635107
>>635234
>>635241
>>636994
>>637010

>>638623

This Anon here, tried the vinegar and ammonia dipping thing, the white stains/coating still remain even after scrubbing and washing. I'm not sure what else to do.

>>639352
This. I'm in southern wisconsin and I want to find some interesting minerals, ores, and rocks.

>>638623
>>639367

Bump.

File: calcite35902a.jpg (80KB, 800x600px) Image search: [Google]

80KB, 800x600px

>>635234
seconding calcite

>>639956
Wisco geologist from before here. Google and acquire a bedrock map of Wisconsin. All the coolest rocks are found in the north-central part of the state. Wausau has some cool pegmatites with euhedral feldspars and large smoky quartz. There's a nice outcrop of complex pegmatite in Florence, you can find location data for both on mindat.org. Mindat is a great resource for finding collecting spots. The Yooper also has a lot of great collecting spots for native silver/copper and other stuff, if you're willing to get up that way.