A 20lb rock under blacklight turns pink.

[G Freeman]

I know the pictures are not that good but wanted to show the color pink or pinkish red under blacklight. This rock is at least as hard as quartz and the green in it came out as blue. Don't know what it is made of but sparkles all over in regular light, thanks for looking.

 

[Las Vegas Bob]

If you do a lot of searching. You can get a longwave and a shortwave bulb then put them in a battery coleman lantern. Price if you can find a used lantern on Craigs list is around $19. Gives you the ability to switch between both wavelengths or if you mod the switch you can use both. I did a post on this a ways back. Been using this for searching buildings for wall pendants for years. Please do a little research on safety for your eyes, glasses are cheaper than smoked retinas.

Cool trick from the 60s! Stay in a room with your blacklight for a half hour or so. Then walk out into normal light. Everythings green. Wow! Farm out! Right arm, outta state man. (In my best Cheech Marin voice.)

I agree if your going to do any work with blacklight you have to get a combination light that has long and shirt wave blacklight and they have to be filtered to get the true colors come out.

 

[loco oro]

Hey freeman are these finds from that same cut or a different location ive been curious as to what you were getting ill get in touch with ya i have been off the grid a while

 

[G Freeman]

Been finding a lot with the green in a different location than where I used to be back when Loco. Sure hope you are back to stay a while. Thanks for all the help you have done for me. Slowed down right now but plan to pick up soon.

 

[loco oro]

I beleive the green you are getting could be related to chlorite the reason i say this is the samples you sent had traces of chlorite and two of the historic mlnes that was in your area reported chloritic mica and chloriticquartz if the soil around your viens you are working are greenish imediatly next to it this is likely the case also a alot of the old virginia mines were in a degrading bedrock/saprolite that was greenish do to the chlorite and being in such close proximity to you leads me to think this is likely and that is a good clue hit me back and i hope to be in your neck of the woods real soon i will bring my gas drill rig and maybe we could get some deeper cores to see whats a little deeper also doyyou know of any primitive campgrounds in the area

 

[G Freeman]

Loco, don't know of any primitive campgrounds. The place I been digging is not a mine it is just straight down in the ground. Been finding some hexagonal crystals that are 6 sided with the green or blue green that is very thin on one side or on two sides of some of them. Probably Chlorite as you say. Hoping to find some Beryl but probably would have to go deeper to find that. Most of the crystals are broken but still have one end that has a point. Hope to find some better stuff soon.

 

[timemachine]

Have you thought about taking it to a local gem/mineral show?

 

[G Freeman]

Have you thought about taking it to a local gem/mineral show?

Well timemachine, I joined a rock and mineral club about 2 months ago and first month meeting I went and took a lot of gemstones and had a crowd of about 100 people and they really seemed to like what I had but no one seemed to know exactly what my specimans were any more than I did. Have not been back yet. May go this month but it is about 150 mile drive one way. Thanks for looking and happy hunting.