Lapidaryforum.net
Let's Rock => Rockhounding Tips, Maps, Trips Etc. => Topic started by: auscarver on September 29, 2018, 03:45:23 AM
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Last weekend I had the pleasure of fossicing a location for rhodonite that has never been mined, my good friend Southerly visited great rough found and great company, rhodonite is very common in my region, to find it with blue green tephroite is a first.
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Wow , how unexpected. I recently found a reference for a deposit of rhodonite here mixed with rhodochrosite.It was a scientific reference and the analysis was properly done.Thanks!
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That is so cool! I have never heard of tephroite. Had to look it up. What a great find!
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A friend rockhound that i collect with is from Eureka and a year or 2 back he gave me some Rhodonite with Yellow also running thru it. It was quite unusual and I had never seen yellow before in my Rhodonites. Not sure what the yellow is though, he did collect it in the Northern CA/Southern OR area.
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irockhound, the yellow is probably spessartite garnet. I think the same yellow occurs in some Australian rhodonites and I have a very nice sample that came from Italy.
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Thanks great feedback, yes I do believe the yellow is related to spasatine garnet, I have also found it in orange, we went nephrite jade hunting on the Sunday and did find some good pieces in the morning, a little fish hook I carved quite a few years back from the deposit we went to.
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Great jade ! Yellow and pink spessartine garnet is common in Washington rhodonite as well and is well described in the scientific literature.
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Love the rock map of Australia. Would love to rock hound there some day.
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I echo the coolness of this associated mineral. In SoCAL rhodonites, I too have seen and sliced up the yellow colocated mineral. Thanks for calling it out as spessartine garnet. Not to get off topic, but exactly what happens to the garnet? Does it essentially melt and get redistributed in the rhodonite as a color smear?
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Very beautiful material.
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The spessartite that replaces the rhodonite are formed as crystal trains as the geologists here call them. The yellow looks monolithic but is actually a series of tiny discrete manganese garnet crystals.At times we get garnet trains in clear quartzite here. The quartzite is very clear , almost as water clear as a clean quartz crystal and pieces I have seen go over a ton at times. The garnet trains are thin and spiral like the dna helix .They are yellow and pink and are usually accompanied by perfect pyrite cubes of various sizes. I have seen a couple pound piece like this sell for $10,000 in the field. Spectacular and probably unique and so rare.
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Wow, now that makes for a real field find. It does sound spectacular. I'd just love to lean down and pick something up and have somebody offer $10K for it. Heck, drinks would be on me all day!
:)
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Last weekend I had the pleasure of fossicing a location for rhodonite that has never been mined, my good friend Southerly visited great rough found and great company, rhodonite is very common in my region, to find it with blue green tephroite is a first.
Incredible ''Australian'' shape (2nd image)! :icon_thumright: