Treasure Hunting

I’m in the midst of working with my friend Joan from Krystal Tips Mining on a “crystal polishing” experiment.  I took several pounds of the quartz crystals of all different shapes and sizes that were uncovered during the June 2008 dig at the Krystal Tips mining claim in the Petersen Mountains near Hallelujah Junction.  The flat of crystals I took (and that we’re experimenting with) were among the “rejects”.  They’re still pretty and have a lot of character, but they just weren’t the better specimens found on the dig.  Joan and I started talking about them, wondering what they would look like polished in a rock tumbler.  And so the experiment began.

The crystal quartz found at the Hallelujah Junction claim is not the kind that you generally want to tumble - it’s too nice.   The scepters and elestials that the site is famous for are so naturally beautiful that you don’t want to make any changes at all to them besides cleaning off the dirt.  Still there were some found that were mostly chunks and not as nice as the rest.  The picture to the left shows the crystals from the flat we are working with before cleaning.

The first thing we wanted to do was get most of the dirt off of the crystals.  It didn’t have to be a perfect cleaning job because the tumbling would help with that.  If the quartz wasn’t going to be tumbled, they’d have to soak for awhile in oxalic acid after the initial clay and dirt was removed.  That wasn’t necessary here.  All we needed to do was clean the crystals with warm soapy water.  Because I’m a bit lazy, I just let them soak for a couple days in the soapy water first to loosen the caked-on dirt and clay.  After that, it all rinsed right off.

The photo to the right shows several of these crystals after getting the dirt of off them.  Already a big difference, isn’t it?  If you look close though, you can still see some of the gunk (yes, gunk is a technical word) on the specimens that you’d normally have to remove after the oxalic acid soak.  But like I said, we’re not worrying about that.

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