Wow... what a great adventure last weekend... Woody got in touch with me and we made arrangements to go prospecting for amazonite... the day was outstanding, the weather was a perfect temperature, Woody's dog Aspen gave me the OK to be prospecting with the two of them, and off we went to Woody's secret spot. I say prospecting however Woody had already keyed in on great spot, told me exactly what to look for and in no time amazonite was coming out of the ground. I can't say enough about Woody's hospitality, he showed me where to go, even let me dig in a spot that he already had going, and carried down the rocks to boot... All in all, two thumbs up... thanks again for a great day...

Glad you had fun. Did you find any suprizes in your clean-up. Maybe anything with fluorite? I wasn't able to get back up there yet. I got my eye set on this Saturday. I can hardly wait to expose more of that wall.

Didn't find anything you'd call a surprise... that one piece that has is a combo of biotite-amazonite which is fairly decent... there was a purple fluorite band along the contact between the feldspar and amazonite in one piece... if you go on Sat. let me know and I'll meet you up there...

UPDATE: Well, we are sitting at 5+" this morning and still snowing... I'm a bit suspect that Saturday might be a bust...

Sweet finds! I really like the Mica books with the Amazonite. Woody gave us a few of those he found and the color combination is great! The weather is alot better than the other day so hopefully you guys were able to get out today for more dig time.

Don't forget to give us an update on how it went.

Here are some results of cleaning and cutting our finds...

Bill,
EXCELLENT job of cleaning and cutting those!

...all I can say is wow
I busted my textile gun (actually it died from neglect).

(I reckon I might have to start being nice to Woody again, dang... need to quit 'ribbing' him)

This one in particular is a superb specimen. What is the red inclusion?

(I reckon I might have to start being nice to Woody again, dang... need to quit 'ribbing' him)


Ha ha ha, NOT! I even had to stay home this weekend. Still on heavy meds and need a step-stool to get in and out of bed. It seems I will be out of the fight for a while. I need to find another project to do around the house, sitting on the deck and looking at the mountains just doesn't get'er done.

That is a good question about the red stuff. I'm sure Bill will have an answer. There has been a lot of pieces with red microline kind of marbled in, but nothing solid like that one.

Sure thing on the Textile Gun. That is one of those things we could pass between us from time to time as needed. Have a good one, Woody.

Man Woody... you put me on the spot about that red inclusion... truth is I'm puzzled as well, it's harder than the Amazonite... that particular piece came from that big rock I chiseled down and you offered to pack it down for me, it took a lot of cutting but I whittled it down... Thanks Chris for the compliment, it's a challenge to get the actual blue coloring to come out in pictures... how are the ribs doing Woody? Sounds like that was one heck of a hit, hope they get better by gold season...

Great pieces Bill with fantastic color!! I'm thinking that the red is actually an iron stain. If you do a cleaning with Iron out, I'm thinking it may go away? It's worth a try. Have you seen the specimen cleaning thread yet Bill?

Thanks Denise... I did use Iron out to help clean up these samples... the red part of that particular sample is actually encrusted on the rock, I have a few other samples that have it as well... definitely was in solution form during deposition and after crystal formation of the Amazonite, very hard as well... Woody showed me a place he had dug @20 yards downhill that had feldspar crystal formation with smaller quartz-albite crystallization on top and a black encrustation on top of both, very hard as well... I suspect a silica based in-situ solution with maganese impurities where it's black and oxidized iron impurities where it's red... just a guess though...

Hello colo_heff, Mrs. CP, and Woody,

I found an amazonite combo that looks exactly like the ones in your photos. I don't have it with me at the moment but will post a photo as soon as I can. Being an abject newbie, could you point me in the right direction towards ideas for how to properly clean it? In the verbiage above I'm seeing words like "textile gun" and "Iron out", and a reference to a specimen cleaning thread, which I will look for.

I'm excited to clean my specimen and display it, but I'm cautious because I don't want to ruin it! Any advice, good books, and suggested links are appreciated.

Thank-you!
Erika

p.s. Woody, if you are "Badger2410" who posted amazonite and smokey quartz-hunting videos on YouTube, I enjoy them very much - I've watched every one of them several times

Sounds like a great piece Erika, we would love to see it! You can go to the "Specimen Cleaning" thread I started in the forum here. It has some great info and even talks about using the textile gun and Iron Out. Hope it helps some.