A Rainbow of Color: Garnet Mineral Collection

[jamesp]

You remind me of this idiot we have in the gem club who likes to argue over anything anyone says. Last month the club was out collecting rocks and I found some druzy and handed it to one of the club members. This guy immediately started arguing that it was not drusy but rather tiny crystals of copper and zinc. Regardless of what they may or may not have been the definition of drusy is tiny crystals:

Read more: forum.rocktumblinghobby.com/thread/64597/garnet-mineral-collection?page=3&scrollTo=731678#ixzz2vWCWQXRU

Your a dick vegasjames.

[grayfingers]

[vegasjames]

Mar 9, 2014 11:15:43 GMT -5 gingerkid said:

vegasjames said:

You remind me of this idiot we have in the gem club who likes to argue over anything anyone says. Last month the club was out collecting rocks and I found some druzy and handed it to one of the club members.This guy immediately started arguing that it was not drusy but rather tiny crystals of copper and zinc. Regardless of what they may or may not have been the definition of drusy is tiny crystals:

www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,44327,44583

Druzy is not a particular type of stone but rather refers to a growth pattern, just like botryoidal does not refer to a particular type of stone but also rather a growth pattern.

vegasjames, Thank you for your unnecessary comments. You misunderstood my post. I was chuckling at jamesp speaking of almost needing an airlift because he was "trapped" in kudzu while looking for garnets. Then I thought he was trying to be humorous showing us his "botryoidal" garnets.

edited to add--I thought jamesp posted the botryoidal garnets, then realized it was your post. My apologies.

I have not seen botryoidal garnets before until jamesp (edited again: you posted, not James) posted them and find it fascinating that there are botryoidal garnets. One fascinating aspect of rock, gem, and mineral collecting is that there's always something new to learn.

I do not consider myself argumentative, nor an idiot, although I might not be the crunchiest cracker in the box. I know many of the forum members from other forums, and I do not believe that they find me argumentative in the least.

Thanks for sharing the botryoidal garnets with us. What locality are they from?

Sorry for the misunderstanding.  You quoted me though with your response, which is why I thought you were giving me a hard time.

They were found close to Las Vegas.  My friend and I were out hiking about 6 years ago and I ran across a part of the mountain where there were some of these and small chunks of a gray, frothy appearance obsidian on the ground.  So I picked up as many as I could find.  I examined the obsidian under the stereoscope and found that the appearance was due to being heavily micro-fractured.  I have not been back since, but am thinking about going back to see if the heavy rains have uncovered anymore.

[vegasjames]

Mar 9, 2014 11:18:03 GMT -5 rocpup said:

Mar 9, 2014 1:58:17 GMT -5 vegasjames said:

These are garnets, and here is a link to the definition of botryoidal for you:

www.gemselect.com/other-info/botryoidal-gems.php

The geologist I showed these too also agreed they were botryoidal garnets.

You remind me of this idiot we have in the gem club who likes to argue over anything anyone says.  Last month the club was out collecting rocks and I found some druzy and handed it to one of the club members.  This guy immediately started arguing that it was not drusy but rather tiny crystals of copper and zinc.  Regardless of what they may or may not have been the definition of drusy is tiny crystals:

www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,44327,44583

Druzy is not a particular type of stone but rather refers to a growth pattern, just like botryoidal does not refer to a particular type of stone but also rather a growth pattern.

Have you presented your Botryoidal Garnets to Mindat for discussion or ID. I would be interested in what they have to say. I find nothing like that in my mineral books. I am not disputing you just asking for clarification. Don

No, I rarely ever go there.  I just gave some to a geologist I know who said that is what they are. I am sending a bunch of rock samples to Canada for testing in a few weeks so I am thinking about sending one of these along as well.

[vegasjames]

Mar 9, 2014 20:18:27 GMT -5 jamesp said:

You remind me of this idiot we have in the gem club who likes to argue over anything anyone says. Last month the club was out collecting rocks and I found some druzy and handed it to one of the club members. This guy immediately started arguing that it was not drusy but rather tiny crystals of copper and zinc. Regardless of what they may or may not have been the definition of drusy is tiny crystals:

Read more: forum.rocktumblinghobby.com/thread/64597/garnet-mineral-collection?page=3&scrollTo=731678#ixzz2vWCWQXRU

Your a dick vegasjames.

Look who's talking!!!

That's why I don't here often. To many pricks like you are only interested in arguing and can care less about the facts.  Like the poster a while back who wanted to argue that the stone I had could not be variscite because it was harder than most variscite.  Variscite can contain chert or chalcedony making a harder stone:

www.mindat.org/article.php/1670/Variscite

He also claimed that variscite is never found with turquoise, which was also wrong.

[jamesp]

Your garnets are amazing James. No doubt. Botryoidal behavior in a garnet does not seem like a possibility.
I like Jan, found them humorous. Because we know garnets well and botryoidal formation of garnets is a mind blower.
I never thought they were fake, just bizarre and interesting. I will guess that a geologist may be amazed also.

[lennyb0b]

Nice collection and very well described.

[aimeesrockworks]

*Edit* Oops, hit enter too early while making this!

What a spectacular collection! I was lucky enough to visit Ely a few years back so I have a few garnets in my collection, but nothing like this. Whew!


A happy sign!! (Hugest copper mine I've ever seen in the background - hugest, maybe not a real word, but it's the best term to use here.)


I'm having a little too much fun in a hole in the dirt. Actually, it was pretty neat to see the digging site because of all the different pits and patterns to the excavations. I didn't find much, just a few small garnets in the tuff-y matrix. We didn't have a lot of time to stop, and we were in a rented RV that I had already overloaded with rocks from other locations. *blush*

[jamesp]

A human mole. Great photo. True rock lover.

[gingerkid]

drocknut, did you cab any of the garnets from the collection??

Thanks for your understanding, vegasjames. I hope you will consider sending the garnets to Canada to be evaluated, and please keep us posted on their findings. I wondered if they might be some type of garnet pseudomorph, such as limonite pseudomorph after garnet? Not sure how they would be conjoined like yours though, maybe the weather?

This is interesting:
From wikipedia on limonite:
"Limonite pseudomorphs have also been formed from other iron oxides, hematite and magnetite; from the carbonate siderite and from iron rich silicates such as almandine garnets."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limonite



Muchos thanks for your kind comments, lennyb0b!

Hi, aimeesrockworks, thank you for sharing your Garnet Hill pic with us! Looks like you're having a good time digging in the dirt. Hope you will share your garnets! We'd love to see 'em! Thanks for your comments.

[vegasjames]

Mar 11, 2014 6:53:43 GMT -5 jamesp said:

Your garnets are amazing James. No doubt. Botryoidal behavior in a garnet does not seem like a possibility.
I like Jan, found them humorous. Because we know garnets well and botryoidal formation of garnets is a mind blower.
I never thought they were fake, just bizarre and interesting. I will guess that a geologist may be amazed also.

Nature does not always follow the rules we think it should.

A while back I was out in the California deserts looking for meteorites.  I ran across two oval stones several inches long that were heavy and magnetic.  When I cut the one stone open it looked just like the Eagle's Nest brachinite meteorite so I sent it off to a meteoric lab for testing.  It also turned out to be garnet.  So garnet does not always form with crystal faces.

[vegasjames]

Mar 11, 2014 18:29:55 GMT -5 gingerkid said:

drocknut, did you cab any of the garnets from the collection??

Thanks for your understanding, vegasjames. I hope you will consider sending the garnets to Canada to be evaluated, and please keep us posted on their findings. I wondered if they might be some type of garnet pseudomorph, such as limonite pseudomorph after garnet? Not sure how they would be conjoined like yours though, maybe the weather?

This is interesting:
From wikipedia on limonite:
"Limonite pseudomorphs have also been formed from other iron oxides, hematite and magnetite; from the carbonate siderite and from iron rich silicates such as almandine garnets."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limonite



Muchos thanks for your kind comments, lennyb0b!

Hi, aimeesrockworks, thank you for sharing your Garnet Hill pic with us! Looks like you're having a good time digging in the dirt. Hope you will share your garnets! We'd love to see 'em! Thanks for your comments.

These are not limonite.  I am familiar with limonite and have found some really nice specimens in several areas of Southern Nevada.  But it is not very common here and there is none in the area where these were found.  And limonite leaves a brown to yellowish-brown streak on a streak plate.  These leave no streak.

[drocknut]

Gingerkid, nope not yet. I don't have equipment plus they are all pretty small. I'd like to eventually get some of the ones I got from Emerald Creek cabbed to see if they have stars.

[aimeesrockworks]

Mar 11, 2014 18:29:55 GMT -5 gingerkid said:

Hi, aimeesrockworks, thank you for sharing your Garnet Hill pic with us! Looks like you're having a good time digging in the dirt. Hope you will share your garnets! We'd love to see 'em! Thanks for your comments.

My house is for sale so I packed away most of my 'rock home decor' (since most folk don't understand that style of decorating). They're all in a box. Somewhere.

[gemfeller]

My focus is on pretty garnets, the kinds that can be used in jewelry. All 20 or so species of garnets are interesting but only five of them are generally used in jewelry. But those five offer a very wide range of color and property differences because of what’s called “miscibility.”

In other words, certain garnet species frequently mix with each other in variable proportions and create a nearly inexhaustible number of color, saturation and tone possibilities. They also vary in terms of brilliance and rainbow-like “fire.”

An example is the grossular garnet species. It has major miscibility relationships with the uvarovite species and the andradite species. It can also mix with almandine and its intermediate varieites. Due to such mixing grossular has the widest range of hues of any garnet type. It varies from near-colorless (Leuco garnet) through pale green (generally misnamed “Merelani Mint”), intense green (trade-named Tsavorite), orange-red (Hessonite or Cinnamon Stone), yellow (not named to my knowledge) and pink (Rosolite.)

Another name for grossular (which is blended mainly with andradite) is Mali Garnet. Because sorting out the actual chemistry of garnets can be very difficult, many garnet types are simply named after the areas where they’re found, in this case the nation of Mali in west Africa. The majority of Mali garnet is plain grossular (which takes its name from the greenish-yellow color of gooseberries.) But some is blended with andradite which gives it unusual hues and brilliance.

This is Mali garnet gem-grade faceting rough. Some is greener and some trends toward the orangy-brown.



This is a faceted Mali garnet representing the yellow grossular hue:



This Mali grossular, with a large percentage of andradite, displays visible “fire” or dispersion, typical of that species.

[jakesrocks]

Very nice Rick. And only a couple of the rough pieces display traces of crystal faces.

[gemfeller]

Don, garnet crystals like these are frequently found in waterworn alluvial deposits. The in situ Mali garnets occur in what are known as porphyroblasts, similar to their grossular cousin Tsavorite. Their isometric singly-refractive crystallization is easily confirmed with a polariscope or dichroscope

[gingerkid]

drocknut, I hope you cab some of the Emerald Creek garnets soon!

aimeesrockworks, sure hate to hear that your pretties are boxed up.

gemfeller, the Mali garnets are gorgeous! Please share more with us!!

[drocknut]

gingerkid, I don't have any equipment so not gonna happen anytime soon unfortunately.

[gingerkid]

Gosh, drocknut, I'm sorry to read that you don't have cabbing equipment. I hope you are able to get a machine soon to accompany your beautiful wire wraps and creations.

I used to use a nail salon tool, wet/dry automotive sandpaper, and knife sharpening blocks to cab materials, then polished with Turtle Wax polishing compound. It takes long time to cab a stone, but you can watch tv while you cab. Welo opals are fun to cab using this method.