Still have more questions than answers, thanks to ASTROBLEME and Diamond Digger I think I'm getting closer Options

[TheRookie]

Thanks to ASTROBLEME and Diamond Digger for the responses in my previous thread. I really do appreciate the time you've taken to answer some of my questions.

I still have many more questions, but I think I'll start with just a couple and some observations.

Is this what I'd be looking for as far as kimberlitic type material?



Most of it is very black until after it's been exposed to the weather, at that point a yellowish and in some areas a rusty red sort of film starts to form on the outer surface. It's very crumbly, I can break up a lot of it with just my hands, or a light tap or two with a hammer. Most of it is fine-grained, but there are chunks that look more like concrete, and then there are some with more of a crystalline appearance. It's fairly heavy and has a lot of iron in it. After breaking it up about 1/3 to 1/2 can be picked up with a magnet. I also have a lot of nasty yellow clay mixed in with the sand/gravel, which is quite different from the reddish brown clay that I'm used to seeing in this area. If you wash the sand/gravel with water you get a nasty yellowish muck that takes quite a while to settle. Is that what you guys refer to as yellow ground?

[Diamond Digger]

TheRookie..

Here are a few pictures of Kimberlite they are on the site and on the net what you are looking for is Purple Garnets, ilmenite, feldspa, unikite etc
Have fun.
Pic1: Note the green Chromium diopside

Pic 2: Lava ash mix with Kimberlite

Pic 3: The usual indicators close to a pipe

When hunting for a pipe look for these indicators ten hand wash for the green Chromium Diopside crystals and then you know you are within .25 miles from the pipe Cr diopside is brittle and does not travel far, follow it till you it the blue/black rock

Pic 4 here you can see the weathered Kimberlite and the green lava ash, green indicate Chromium Diopside no chromium no diamonds..
Have fun out there.
DD

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[TheRookie]

TheRookie.. Here are a few pictures of Kimberlite they are on the site and on the net what you are looking for is Purple Garnets, ilmenite, feldspa, unikite etc Have fun. Pic1: Note the green Chromium diopside Pic 2: Lava ash mix with Kimberlite Pic 3: The usual indicators close to a pipe When hunting for a pipe look for these indicators ten hand wash for the green Chromium Diopside crystals and then you know you are within .25 miles from the pipe Cr diopside is brittle and does not travel far, follow it till you it the blue/black rock Pic 4 here you can see the weathered Kimberlite and the green lava ash, green indicate Chromium Diopside no chromium no diamonds.. Have fun out there. DD

I didn't realize that unakite was an indicator I should be on the lookout for. I have a boulder, well, it was a boulder, much of it is badly decomposed, that was partially altered to what appears to be unakite. Kinda cool the way the altered stone is far less decomposed than the rest of it. I'm working in an old stream bed, I was actually hand digging a well for outdoor use when I came across all this stuff. There is an old stream bed buried in my yard, under about 4 feet of red clay. The boulder that looks like it's partially unakite was near the top of the sand/gravel & was too big to move, so I dug down next to it. A couple days later a rainstorm washed the sand/gravel out from under it & it started to fall down into the hole. I pulled out about 5 chunks of it, the largest about 80-100lbs. but a lot of it just disintegrated. I cut a small slice out of a piece of it with a hand grinder, & exposed a vein of the green in a small pc.



In this pic you can see the transition from altered to unaltered stone.




Here's a small green stone I found the other day. Not sure if it's diopside or what.




Today I found this. What may come out looking black is really a very, very dark green.