Pink n Red

shaman15771 · Sep 5, 2014

Having a problem uploading, disregard bottom picture. Having some problems getting good ones. I wonder if my smart phone wouldn't do better.

The red ones I'm pretty sure are garnet, but what are the baby pink ones, garnet also?

Eu_citzen · Sep 6, 2014

The first pictures sure look like garnet. Nice colour on those to!

shaman15771 · Sep 6, 2014

Even the baby pink? Never seen one that color. Every third rock I pick up appears to be Garnet or blue quartz.

PamDF · Sep 7, 2014

Spinel?

shaman15771 · Sep 7, 2014

Good question. Would spinel come in same host rock as garnet?

Eu_citzen · Sep 8, 2014

shaman15771 said:
Even the baby pink? Never seen one that color. Every third rock I pick up appears to be Garnet or blue quartz.

Can't say. Do they look the same? Check under magnification. Spinell usually forms other crystal habits then garnet.

shaman15771 · Sep 8, 2014

The light pink is very clear and appears to be flawless with 30X. Almost looks like it's already been cut. Need to get a better picture!

DDancer · Sep 8, 2014

You look to have a specimen with very fine to micro fine quartz and garnet crystallizations mixed together with some mica and possibly magnetite. Almost looks like granite. The pink is due to the fine dissemination of garnet thru the stone~ some of which is being seen thru the clear and translucent quartz that makes up the host body of the specimen and kind of makes it glow pink. (think of a hazy piece of glass and a colored light behind it, the whole of the glass will appear to be the color of the light) Red and pink are not uncommon colors for garnet especially in very thin and small crystals and under magnification flawless crystals are common and quite beautiful.
Flaws in crystals tend to occur as crystals get larger due to internal, and external, stresses. Deeper colorations also occur in larger crystals as the depth of the crystal increases the coloration as well as making the crystal more opaque (like hazy glass mentioned above)

shaman15771 · Sep 10, 2014

Interesting DD. However, since I have 10 or so of these stones, I don't believe that could be correct. Just to be sure, I will try and pop one out this weekend and see what I've got. Host rock is more of a pegamite with biotite (black mice). Very hard to tell with pictures I realize. Trying to do them with my kindle and it's not working well.