Hello All, new with questions :), Learning to Prospect Options

[Chachi]

First off, this site is awesome and I love the Colorado miners that are willing to share great info on how to prospect, clean and ID stuff. CP and family keep up the "how to" threads they are awesome.

My family and I are completely new to this and we are spearheaded by my daughters love of rocks, obsession with prospectors, and her huge collection of random rocks that she picks up. We are also very luck that a person at my work is willing to show us the ropes on how to be a rock hound. We have been on one trip and we are obsessed, I guess I will be doing alot less fishing :), not that I was good in the first place.

We currently are trying to clean up the minerals we found and had a few questions/observations. I will have the after pictures up and hopefully can get some help with ID'ing them.

Observations:
1. Sonic Scrubber (amazon)....awesome.
2. The textile gun (pace brand I think) awesome and dangerous.
3. Just starting on the Iron out so not sure on that yet.
4. Completely surprised how much the kids like cleaning the rocks, but I guess part of the fun is seeing how cool they look after clean up with a bonus of making a mess.

Questions
1. when scrubbing using dish soap there is a bunch of orange bubbles, assuming this is iron/rust, Do I just keep scrubbing till there are no more orange bubbles, is that a good gauge or should I stop and put in iron out for a few days then scrub?
2. When Cleaning Geothite, is it normal to scrub (gently of course) a lot to get it clean especially the rust out of it? I feel like I am hurting the mineral but it still looks awesome. When is the geothite actually clean?
3. Using the textile gun to clean minerals, do you want to leave the microcline attached or not, I seem to knock of it off, is it better to have a mineral with it on there or cleaned off?

thanks guys and I am excited to be a part of the fun.

chachi

[Denise]

Hi chichi and welcome to the CP forums! Thanks for the site compliments, make yourself at home. You ask some great questions and hopefully I can help answer them.

When cleaning a freshly dug specimen, it can definitely have dirt and clay deep in the piece. I find that soaking it in warm soapy water helps, slightly agitating the water. Cleaner water is a good gauge that your getting closer to moving on with the cleaning process Till I see what is on the piece without the mud, I won't scrub it as there may be smaller specimens attached to the main piece like Fluorites, Goethite, Quartz tips, etc. I started a thread for "Specimen Cleaning" that would really help you also.

Goethite is an iron ore so I wouldn't recommended using Iron Out for those. Colorado's Goethite can also be very delicate, so I usually don't scrub on those. I have found that the textile gun works best for cleaning those up. The cleaning specimens thread also has info on cleaning Goethite.

Microcline can be a host rock for many specimens so with it is fine. Having multiple minerals on one specimen makes it a combination piece and a lot more appealing to the eye I think. If some loose pieces come off when you are cleaning it, then it may have come off anyways. You just want to make sure you are not too close to the specimen when using the textile gun, it can be very powerful so make sure you have it fine tuned and at the right distance from the specimen.

If the kids are really enjoying cleaning the specimens also, I would recommend using a warm vinegar to replace the Iron Out. It acts as a mild acid and is a lot safer to use working with the kids.

Hopefully this answered your questions but If you have any more, please ask. We would be glad to help.
Good luck on your prospecting adventures and we look forward to the pics.


Denise