Turquoise??
- Thread starter Traceejean
- Start date
Montana Explorer
Newbie
Look's like a copper silicate to me, did you do a hardness test on it?
Malachite is pretty soft, around 3-4 on the mohs scale; I've also seen copper silicates that were softer than chrysacolla but harder than turquoise or malachite. That specimen looks like it is quartz based, hard to tell from the pic if the copper mineralization is inclusive to the quartz, or if the quartz material is just the host rock, if you know what I mean...
I used to do a lot of rock hounding around the Jerome, AZ area in the tailings piles from the old Phelps-Dodge mine, & have found a lot of interesting copper based materials including malachite, turqoise & chrysacholla...
Copper mine tailings piles around Douglas AZ & Bisbee are some of the best; but Jerome is not bad at all, either.
Malachite is pretty soft, around 3-4 on the mohs scale; I've also seen copper silicates that were softer than chrysacolla but harder than turquoise or malachite. That specimen looks like it is quartz based, hard to tell from the pic if the copper mineralization is inclusive to the quartz, or if the quartz material is just the host rock, if you know what I mean...
I used to do a lot of rock hounding around the Jerome, AZ area in the tailings piles from the old Phelps-Dodge mine, & have found a lot of interesting copper based materials including malachite, turqoise & chrysacholla...
Copper mine tailings piles around Douglas AZ & Bisbee are some of the best; but Jerome is not bad at all, either.
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