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[VegasJames]

20191029_143113 by James Sloane, on Flickr

Untitled by James Sloane, on Flickr

20191029_143555 by James Sloane, on Flickr

20191029_143454 by James Sloane, on Flickr

20191029_143241 by James Sloane, on Flickr

20191029_140940 by James Sloane, on Flickr

20191029_135400 by James Sloane, on Flickr

[lithicbeads]

Is it mostly urface stain or can you get cabs fom it? Excemment color and contrast.

[safossils]

Nice!

[peruano]

I've seen fairly authoritative folks fooled as to what is paint (superficial coating of chrysocolla) and what is cuttable material. Only by handling it or running it through the saw can you be positive.  Me I would have picked it up, but would cut a bit before I staked a claim

[VegasJames]

Is it mostly urface stain or can you get cabs fom it? Excemment color and contrast.

Most of the material in the area is just surface but I did get quite a few pieces that have some depth that I can cab. And some turquoise veins in various pieces that could make some beautiful cabs.

[VegasJames]

I've seen fairly authoritative folks fooled as to what is paint (superficial coating of chrysocolla) and what is cuttable material. Only by handling it or running it through the saw can you be positive.  Me I would have picked it up, but would cut a bit before I staked a claim

Most pieces you can tell if the copper minerals run through or deep by looking at edges to see how thick the copper layer is. And sometimes you can see veins that run around a rock or you can see the same copper inclusion on both sides of the stone showing it going through the stone.

On the other hand I have also had stones that did not look like much from the outside but had beautiful pockets of copper minerals inside.

This is why I tumble a lot of my stones first with no grit to reduce the softer material such as dolomite and limonite leaving behind the harder copper minerals.  Then I decide what to do with them from there.

Although stones do not always have to be used or lapidary. I have a lot of specimens that are too beautiful to cut up so I put them on a shelf to enjoy.

[hummingbirdstones]

Nice haul, James!  Beautiful colors in those rocks.   

[ileney]

Here's a silly question, but how can you identify the turquoise veins from the other copper minerals? When you have s mostly brown rock with green or aqua blue veins in it, is that what you mean?

[VegasJames]

Here's a silly question, but how can you identify the turquoise veins from the other copper minerals? When you have s mostly brown rock with green or aqua blue veins in it, is that what you mean?

I showed it to people who work a lot with turquoise and they said the glassy light green and the glassy dark blue is turquoise. Turquoise actually comes in about 70 shades of colors. It is not always blue  or veined as we commonly see on the market.

Here are some links with examples of different turquoises from Nevada:

http://www.turquoise-museum.com/Nevadaturquoisemines.htm

http://www.turquoise-museum.com/Nevadaturquoisemines.htm?fbclid=IwAR1-4K0g4AurgNuuqk02vBzmGeBPCQXF-9P-rq_GdeD-59WTugQEKYCzcp0

[ileney]

Yes, Thank you.

I had seen this. I actually have a bit of vintage turquoise from my dad that he purchased in the 1970's-1980's that originated from the Gem Blue mine and the Kingman mines, but I also have a much bigger amount of what I assume to be vintage chrysocolla from the same era and not turquoise (it looks similar to your stones.) some of it was mixed in with lots of agates and jaspers and not labelled originally. I was curious if any of my chrysocolla might actually have turquoise too. I'm guessing not, but I can't really tell from your description. It may be one of those things where I'll just assume it's all chrysocolla.

[VegasJames]

Yes, Thank you.

I had seen this. I actually have a bit of vintage turquoise from my dad that he purchased in the 1970's-1980's that originated from the Gem Blue mine and the Kingman mines, but I also have a much bigger amount of what I assume to be vintage chrysocolla from the same era and not turquoise (it looks similar to your stones.) some of it was mixed in with lots of agates and jaspers and not labelled originally. I was curious if any of my chrysocolla might actually have turquoise too. I'm guessing not, but I can't really tell from your description. It may be one of those things where I'll just assume it's all chrysocolla.

There are tests that can be run such as hardness and density, which is not super reliable but helps. Acid testing is also a way to go if there is extra material to test.  Chrysocolla is a copper silicate and thus will not react to the acid as where turquoise, which is a copper aluminum phosphate dissolves slowly in hydrochloric acid.  I have also run phosphate tests using ammonium molybdate on some stones I suspect of being turquoise since chrysocolla does not contain phosphate. Therefore a positive test can confirm turquoise.

One reason I seriously doubt this is chrysocolla is the fact that chrysocolla tends to occur in rounded shapes such as botryoidal or bubble forms.

A major issue I have had for a long time is that the term "chrysocolla" gets used loosely by a lot of people to name any unidentified copper ores, which leads to a lot of confusion of what chrysocolla is. In fact I have so called "experts" call stones that were too hard, too dense, that tested positive for high levels of phosphate and dissolve in acid still call these stones chrysocolla when it is impossible for it to be chrysocolla. I even had one idiot down in Quartzite that called the hard material I had that tested positive for high levels of phosphate and again reacted to acid "crapcolla".  This is jewelry made from the material, which all tests indicate turquoise. It took a polish with no problem and did not require any stabilization. Chysocolla tend to be very soft (2.5-3.5) and would likely need stabilization.

20161108_230632-1 - Copy by James Sloane, on Flickr

Here are some unstabilized cabs made from the same material.

20160828_164515 by James Sloane, on Flickr

20160828_164113 by James Sloane, on Flickr

20160828_163842 by James Sloane, on Flickr

20160828_164157 by James Sloane, on Flickr

20160828_164640 by James Sloane, on Flickr

20160828_164758 by James Sloane, on Flickr

20160828_164825 by James Sloane, on Flickr

Why would any person who actually knows what they are talking about call this "crapcolla" especially when all tests have ruled out any possibility of it being chrysocolla? And it is obviously not crap regardless.  Some people seem to have a knee jerk reaction and they see a copper mineral and immediately it is chrysocolla in their mind.

And I have seen a lot of people refer to "silicated chrysocolla" simply as chrysocolla leading to more confusion. "Silicated chrysocolla" is not a chrysocolla. It is a chalcedony stained with copper salts. So this leads to more confusion as to what chrysocolla actually is.