Finds from an outing today... Options

[LBC970]

Hi everybody,

I am pretty sure I have never posted here, but I have been a lurker for a while, and have gotten tons of help from this site. But I am at a loss here...

The family and I went camping this weekend, and as I always do, I started scooping gravel from one of the local streams to see what I could find. The most interesting thing on nearly every scoop was these little "rocks"...



I am not about to jump to any conclusions here and say I hit the mother lode of diamonds in the wrong part of the state, but I am curious what you guys think they might be. I am leaning towards quartz, but the clarity of some of the stones is amazing, some of them come out of the stream looking like ice. The picture doesn't do these things justice, and I need to clean them up, but the clarity when pulled from the stream was amazing. The larger one near the top left of the image looks like it was cut by a jeweler, it has 12 near perfect facets.

The location found was at multiple sites along a stream southwest of Carbondale, CO. Only about 12 miles from town center. To my knowledge there are no real prominent veins of quartz in the area, and we are near the headwaters of the stream where we camped, maybe only a couple miles away.

Any help you guys can offer in identifying these stones would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

EDIT: Thats a terrible picture once on the site, the full res version is here --> http://imgur.com/3g4hAyd

[Yoda]

Hi LBC970, welcome to posting!

My first test would be to see if one sample can be scratched with a knife. If it can't, see if it will scratch glass. This can quickly help narrow things down.

I'm going to suspect a knife will scratch these, if anything because of the sheer number you found. The octahedral shape to that top left one (and one or two others) then makes me suspect fluorite. You can play with UV and torch tests at that point, which is always fun, but not always as conclusive as a quick specific gravity (or density) test. Link below shows you how to do that quickly and relatively easily.

http://www.johnbetts-fineminerals.com/jhbn...fic_gravity.htm

Flourite will divide out to a S.G. of just about 3-3.25 ... given the octahedral shape of that one crystal and a S.G. result in that range, you should then be highly confident with what you have.

If it doesn't scratch under knife, and can scratch glass, and you come up with a S.G. of 3.5-3.53 ... then I'll shut up and bow to an incredibly unlikely diamond find.

Finally, if I'm just being fooled by the shape of that crystal and you are scratching glass, you might also get a S.G. of 2.65, and be holding quartz. In fact, some of these crystals kinda look like they have trigonal structure to them, so you may have a few mixed in.

Please do let us know what you find out, either way. We have people who will likely be happy to throw some tips to narrow it down if you get results other than expected. (I kinda bow out here because I predominantly play with gold, and know far less about crystals than a lot of the folks here.)

[MikeS]

Welcome to the forums LBC970!

It's hard to tell from the pick but looks like they have some structure like diamonds. The scratch tests and specific gravity tests can help narrow it down. I read in another topic that diamonds from the river are dry right from the water and resist getting wet or something to that effect. Diamonds will scratch just about anything. Glass and quartz are good test material. A better close up of the faceted one(s) could help with ID.

[LBC970]

Hi LBC970, welcome to posting!

My first test would be to see if one sample can be scratched with a knife. If it can't, see if it will scratch glass. This can quickly help narrow things down.

I'm going to suspect a knife will scratch these, if anything because of the sheer number you found. The octahedral shape to that top left one (and one or two others) then makes me suspect fluorite. You can play with UV and torch tests at that point, which is always fun, but not always as conclusive as a quick specific gravity (or density) test. Link below shows you how to do that quickly and relatively easily.

http://www.johnbetts-fineminerals.com/jhbn...fic_gravity.htm

Flourite will divide out to a S.G. of just about 3-3.25 ... given the octahedral shape of that one crystal and a S.G. result in that range, you should then be highly confident with what you have.

If it doesn't scratch under knife, and can scratch glass, and you come up with a S.G. of 3.5-3.53 ... then I'll shut up and bow to an incredibly unlikely diamond find.

Finally, if I'm just being fooled by the shape of that crystal and you are scratching glass, you might also get a S.G. of 2.65, and be holding quartz. In fact, some of these crystals kinda look like they have trigonal structure to them, so you may have a few mixed in.

Please do let us know what you find out, either way. We have people who will likely be happy to throw some tips to narrow it down if you get results other than expected. (I kinda bow out here because I predominantly play with gold, and know far less about crystals than a lot of the folks here.)

Thanks for all the good info! I will have to pick up a smaller scale and try that out, the one I have goes to 800g and doesn't even register the stone on the glass.

As for fluorite vs granite, I am still leaning towards granite, the first thing we did when we got home was scratch some glass with it, and it does scratch!

I will post up here when I find a smaller scale and get the SG figured out. Thanks again!

Welcome to the forums LBC970!

It's hard to tell from the pick but looks like they have some structure like diamonds. The scratch tests and specific gravity tests can help narrow it down. I read in another topic that diamonds from the river are dry right from the water and resist getting wet or something to that effect. Diamonds will scratch just about anything. Glass and quartz are good test material. A better close up of the faceted one(s) could help with ID.

That's good to know on the water thing, these came out wet, that's when they look so clear too.

The only camera available at the moment is on a cell phone, I will try and get a clearer one when we get back from NY. Thanks for your help!

[fenixsmom]

Another way to tell is the aforementioned torch test. It sucks, but it's effective. Heat the stone with a torch. Diamonds repel heat. So if it's hot to the touch after heating, it's not a diamond. I read elsewhere on the forum that diamonds have a waxy like coating in the raw. Good luck and congratulations in the find!

[swizz]

I have nothing to add except welcome to CP Forums!

[NewRockHounder]

Or you can always bite down on a couple pieces, if you feel/taste bleeding, you know they're rocks.

[marntson]

Possibly zircon?

[CP]

Hi LBC970 and welcome to the Colorado Prospector forums. Thank you for the kind compliment too, we are very glad you've found useful information around the forums. Good to have you aboard and posting now, we'll all be looking forward to your future participation.
Cool finds and definitely some nice crystal structure to several of those. Your original picture in the first post is capable of opening for large blow up view, you just have to click on it to open.

Sounds like you've already ruled out Fluorite which is right, I don't think they could stand much wear to make an alluvial material as Fluorite since it's so soft.
The specific gravity test will help for sure as would the scratch tests if you can hold on to em'.

You can also make a count on the sides of the double terminated crystals to make a partial id.....You mentioned 12 facets to the upper left one but several in your pic appear to be orthorhombic to me (8 sides) which could be diamonds where as hexagonal would indicate quartz having twelve sides. Too difficult to tell for sure from only a picture even when blown up to large size.
Some local jewelers will test a couple stones with their diamond tester usually too, you might take those few better samples into one of them to see if they will do a quick check on a couple.

We'll all be waiting to hear what your final results to out to be, nice finds and good luck. If they are diamonds that would be sweet!

[ASTROBLEME]

Welcome LBC970,

Photo identification of mineral crystals can be tricky. My thinking is that you may have collected some Phenakite crystals. Phenakite is a beryllium orthosilicate that has a hardness of 7.5 to 8.0 which is substantially exceeding that of quartz. That would allow for the crystal you found to scratch glass and quartz easily, as quartz is only a hardness of 7. The calculated density of Phenakite is 2.97 to 3.00 grams per cubic centimeter. So it would settle to the bottom of a pan much more readily than would quartz. The quartz calculated density is only 2.65 to 2.66 grams per cubic centimeter.

Some of the best examples of Phenakite crystals in the world come from the Mount Antero area in Chaffee County and the Crystal Park area in Teller County. There are other notable occurrences scattered about Colorado.

Very nice finds and this shows that you have developed good panning techniques for gemstone recovery.

[johnnybravo300]

Looks like phenakite. Its heavier and harder than quartz but has a much higher luster. Lots in teller county too. Usually mistaken for quartz.

[GeoMatt]

Based on the rough location of collection provided by the OP, I'll go with quartz. The apparent crystal habit of a couple of those is somewhat uncommon, but not unheard of.