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

[MikeS]

Welcome to the forums Chachi!

I recommend using the textile gun on Goethite crystals. Most of the decay/rust on my Goethite specimens is yellow/orange limonite which Super Iron Out has little to no effect on. I used to gently scrub with soapy water but the textile gun gets into the crevices that even a fine toothbrush can't.

I try to leave any Feldspars or other minerals connected to my specimens but sometimes a specimen can be improved by removing some of that stuff.

If your soapy bubbles are still turning orange/red then it's likely you are still removing clay/debris. My brother has had great results soaking rocks in the soapy water for a week or more with a few gentle scrubs before going to the Iron Out. After Iron Out another soapy bath and scrubbing can have even more great results. Some specimens I have found are so rust coated that you can scrub forever and keep getting orange bubbles. Iron Out can help speed up the process when necessary. Don't breathe the fumes. I use gloves and eye protection when using Iron Out. I also use gloves when scrubbing rocks that were in Iron Out previously.

Can't wait to see some pics! Hope this helps.