FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[Justin297206913]

There was a ton of small pieces of quartz around the huge rock pictured. It had somewhat surfaced. Dig deeper or close by near the surface?

[vic rzonca]

Justin, looks like the quartz pocket is packed with the red clay common in quartz veins in Arkansas. Look for, and don't overlook areas of this filling, sometimes it's hard to see what you've got, very sticky stuff. There was a video on the Crystal Springs web site that showed quartz crystal extractions in this red clay in Arkansas. At any rate, it goes without saying, dig where the quartz is, don't dig where there are no pockets. ;-)

[Justin297206913]

Vic the only problem is the whole area, 20 acres is covered in quartz from dime sized to car sized. No bs. Lol

[vic rzonca]

The next thing to do is a careful examination of the accessible quartz to discover if it has a definite and obvious crystal structure, or are you looking at fractured quartz infilled with clay? Kind of hard to tell from your shots and they look small. Bigger is better. Have you identified the country rock, the matrix? About the only thing you can do, short of developing your X-ray vision, is uncover the quartz vein and follow it. One thing field collectors have a problem with is when to stop. Only you know when that time has arrived. I think you have the fever, you'll have to feed it.

[Justin297206913]

I found a couple of smaller rocks with facets around the big one but none I saw were crystals. Most of this area was old farm land that my great grandparents owned with gardens and livestock covering most of it. Been MD around the old home place too. With doing lots of research, there's lots to find in the area but little time to dig and look :(

[Mike Wood]

Hi Justin,
the big rock you pictured from last weekends' digging (with the black stain) looks to me like granite - which is good - that is the kind of rock which hosts pegmatite veins. The smoky quartz crystal you found could only have originated from a pegmatite vein (or more strictly, a pocket in a pegmatite vein).
Now the second rock pictured that you dug up last weekend (IMG_1079.jpg) looks to me like a big chunk of feldspar with some quartz. If it is, this too can only have originated from a pegmatite vein. Could you clean that rock and post a photo of it? Even better would be to break it half and photo the broken side and the (cleaned) unbroken side.
The photo's of the white quartz in the small pocket look to me like the sort of quartz you get in hydrothermal veins, which do also occur in granite, but it's not the same as pegmatite veins - however the two vein types can occur in proximity to each other. The hydrothemal quartz veins are just a later stage of mineralisation.

So you have a smoky quartz crystal, and maybe a big chunk of white feldspar (please send another photo of that!) both of which would indicate the prescence of a pegmatite vein!
You also say there are tons of pieces of quartz all over the place. Are you sure it's all quartz; some of it may be feldspar. The other thing is that smoky quartz will go white with exposure to the sun, eventually; probably over many years. I suggest you look over all the lumps of quartz lying about - with practice you should be able to tell pegmatitic quartz from hydrothermal quartz. Wouldn't mind seeing a photo or two of these car sized blocks of quartz...

What I'm driving at is the possibility you could have both pegmatite veins and hydrothermal veins on your property. The former could contain pockets of smoky quartz crystals, the latter is the most likely potential gold source...

Good luck!

Mike

[Justin297206913]

How would I go about breaking it open? I would love to see what's inside of it

[Justin297206913]

I was down in the nearby creek panning and found this today

[Justin297206913]

Since this is the second piece of a quartz crystal I've found does that reassure that there is in fact a quartz pocket on the property and close to the surface? Neither piece looks like it has been washed any distance(not rounded)

[Pierre Joubert]

[Mike Wood]

Are you sure it is quartz? It kind of reminds me of topaz.

"How would I go about breaking it open?"

Bash it with a hammer - see what's inside.

[Justin297206913]

I thought topaz was a blue-ish color. But then again I'm completely new to this. Lol

[Jordi Fabre]

It looks to me as Quartz. Broken Quartz, but Quartz ;-)

[Pierre Joubert]

[Justin297206913]

I found a lot of lead shot from shooting targets in the field up the hill from the creek in the same area I found this piece of quartz. Would that indicate it came from the same area?

[Pierre Joubert]

[Justin297206913]

Found this in the creek today. Is it worth cleaning and what would I use to clean it with? Looks kinda like small crystals with a lot of creek moss build up

[Justin297206913]

Another and it's the same on both sides. With the lines

[vic rzonca]

Good signs. Obvious crystal growth into open space. And a rather large space the crystals have grown into. What might these crystals be? Do the hand specimens seem unusually heavy? My first thought was Baryte. Then it was cleavelandite. Look on the high ground around the creek, if any. Maybe scratch around a bit on either side of where you found this, and a little up hill. Your field collected specimens show that there is pocket mineralization in the area. Interesting arm chair collecting opportunity. Lets see what you find.

[Justin297206913]

There are a ton of big rocks nearby some with obvious signs of holes in them. I can attach them