Gemstone and mineral geology applied to prospecting course

[user 4386]

There are many clubs etc. that discuss how to physically prospect and how to cut stones etc. However would there be any interest in a not-too-expensive course (especially if a club provided the venue) by a geo with around 45 years experience who has always had an interest in gems and has worked as a mineralogist worldwide from Australia to Africa to North America and Asia uncluding Russia.

Something like:

A laypersons guide to chemical elements, the building blocks of minerals
What is a mineral and what is a rock (and the major rocks types)?
How are minerals classified into different groups?
What are "primary" versus "secondary" minerals (usually the ones collected most) and how does one form from the other
What are precious and semi-precious gem minerals?
The basics of determining minerals and gems including field tests, SG, RI, UV, laboratory tests with microscopes, X-rays and SEM and sending samples to laboratories for analysis (and the costs) - "just give me the basics"
Weathering and streams - the main way secondary minerals form and gems disperse
How does geology decide whether an area will contain sapphires and rubies, zircon, topaz, precious or common opal, fossil wood and agate, diamonds, aquamarine versus emerald?
How does it tell you exactly where to look once you have chosen an area?
Some chosen examples, especially Australia, and legal issues (not getting shot, prosecuted, or spoiling it for others in the future)?

And what else can you think of that you would like? If an insured club activity field trips might be possible as well.

I was thinking of splitting the above into a few shorter and separate parts like background to rocks and minerals, background to using geology in your search, applied prospecting and identification, so that people could decide which or all might be relevant.

 

[shivan]

G'day godierocks sounds like an interesting idea, i know i would be interested.
Some friends of ours got us interested in geology when they held a short weekend course of the geology of gold. I believe they ran into problems with people cancelling and not getting enough numbers.
But organizing it through clubs could help out with that problem.

Our lapidary club has a mineral group and i believe they have had a few guest speakers. I could try and see if there would be any interest.

 

[Lefty]

An excellent idea! I have a bunch of books on where to find gemstones in Australia but none of them have very much to say about one of the most fundamental aspects of prospecting and fossicking - understanding why things are found where they are found. How did they form, disperse and how to recognise what potential an area's geology might hold.

I remember sitting beside the campfire as a kid with dad, uncle and a bunch of miners at Rubyvale and asking why there were sapphires here but not elsewhere - nobody present really knew. All they could say was "they're volcanic". Ok, so how do I recognise volcanically-derived ground? Are all volcanics the same? Do they all produce sapphires and zircons? Are there different kinds of volcanoes producing different gemstones? Did all gemstones come from volcanoes? Nobody could give me any really good answers.

Anybody can rock up at a fossicking area and start digging but an understanding of some very basic geology with a slant towards gemstones would be immensely helpful.

 

[Heatho]

Anybody can rock up at a fossicking area and start digging but an understanding of some very basic geology with a slant towards gemstones would be immensely helpful.

I think this quote explains me, I know I can rock up to certain spots, start digging and have a great chance at finding some A grade stones. Sure we can sit around and have a talk about where they came from over a beer at the end of the day and look at my professional mining mates collections, but do they really have any less of an idea than someone else with a theory, of which there are many.

Then I can get back to Sydney, head down to my gemologist/gem cutter mates place (who is a member here also) and talk about cut's and stones until the cows come home. Mind you Barney cuts some of the best quality precision stones you're ever likely to see.

Might be an intersting course for some but..... I guess I'm just into learning at my own pace, not too interested in prospecting for new deposits.

Not a bad idea Goldirocks, but not for me. Please don't take this the wrong way.

 

[Lefty]

I know I can rock up to certain spots, start digging and have a great chance at finding some A grade stones. big_smile

Only problem is that here in QLD, there may be virtually massive potential in the geology of the east but the number of areas open to the public can just about be counted on one hand.

I'm surrounded what I now understand to be vast swathes of potential gem-bearing geology......yet the nearest place I'm officially allowed to fossick is nearly 6 hours drive away. For us poor old rockhounds here, it's kind of like lying between the giant tanks on the floor of a brewery while dying of thirst Nobody wanted to be the clubs field officer when I was a member - the previous one told the then-current one "there is just nothing here anywhere". It's more likely that it's actually as rich and varied as New England.... but there is no access to any of it. Except Riverslea and Lowmead - one of which will soon cease to exist and the other very likely will as well

With the exception of when I have a week off at the right time of year and do the 5-6 hour drive out to the Anakie gemfields, prospecting is all I've really got.

 

[Heatho]

Pretty much the same in NSW, mostly all the good spots are on private property. Only a few easily accessible public sites that produce decent stones, plenty more that are out of the way.

That's why I prefer to go to the pay to dig spot at Inverell, plenty of easy access over 1200 acres of private property.

A course like Goldierocks is proposing would be great for someone interested in prospecting for new sites I totally agree, if he does it hopefully you can gain a new perspective on hunting for new ground.

 

[Lefty]

They did have some pay-to-dig private places here like Proston - unfortunately, Proston is no longer. Public liability insurance costs of giving people permission to dig on your land are onerous to say the very least. The labradorite deposit at Springsure is still open for a very small fee. Again, it's a very long drive for me.

It's a real shame about the public liability thing - the number of private properties where things are likely to exist is such that there could be a real tourist industry here.

I'd like to see gem-obsessed geologists publish a comprehensive prospecting guide for Australia, that covers the sorts of things that would be covered in such a course. A lot of geo's actually don't seem to know a great deal about the subject - I don't think it's really their job except for a tiny handful of them. I think some of the big commercial sapphire miners at Anakie employed a geologist. Be good to be able to pick his or her brains.

 

[user 4386]

I carry my own public liability insurance which I show (I need it for my work).

I hope to write that book one day, but writing a book takes a lot more work than running a course (which I do every year for gold - usually get 20-25 takers, this will be the 23rd year.....).

I realise the problem - guess I see gems everywhere I go. I was trying to design it to suit the mineral collectors as well. Maybe I will stick with gold.

 

[Heatho]

I reckon give it a go for gems and minerals Goldierocks, I'm sure you'd get a quite a few people that would be keen. I wasn't trying to be negative.

 

[user 4386]

There are practical issues. I'm not trying to make a fortune out of it, and my aim was to keep it low cost, but obviously there are costs (getting anywhere other than where I live costs money, having a place to give the course costs money, staying anywhere costs money). There can be ways to cut costs (eg club-rooms, being billeted, payment in kind like being taken out to some good sites, doing it en route to somewhere else). I have used these in the past for gold.

I might try a different tack, to include those who have never done any prospecting and draw in more of the mineral collectors, few of whom use this site (I was mine geologist on a famous mine called Tsumeb and did my thesis on it, and few serious collectors anywhere in the world would not have heards of it). Stilll would not include much on physical prospecting but refer them to clubs etc. to learn about seiving, panning, metal detecting etc in details - might boost memberships a bit (and more participants means governments are less quick to close down access because of pressure groups - it is something that annoys me that the only things in the natural world that the public knows about are green, even though I enjoy those things as well). Large numbers keep costs lower and make it worthwhile for me (talking to three people is not very satisfying, as well as not covering costs). Perhaps through adult education or U3A in a major city - costs more for participants that way but not an arm and a leg, and usually would extend over more evenings (e.g. CAE provide venue and take a cut). I prefer giving more concentrated courses (eg my gold course is 5 days full-time but includes one and a half field days and is for geos, although I am thinking of running one for non-geos that is shorter). Something like minerals and gems would need to be a full weekend I suspect if done as a crash course, but if CAE or similar would run iver many evenings.

Anyway, if I decide to run either the minerals and gems course or the gold course I will post details here. I'm not a novice at doing this sort of thing, and will probably do something, the question being how and when (if I decide to proceed, it will happen).

 

[kurrajong]

Goldierocks, you were a lucky man to have worked at Tsumeb.

I ran across this page a while ago
http://www.mineralmasterpiece.com/Localities/Tsumeb.htm

Work is not quite how I would describe it when surrounded by all those magnificent pieces.

 

[SteelPat]

I like the idea but it would have to be some form of online course. Unfortunately when you work for yourself, regular times etc can be difficult.

 

[Lefty]

I like the idea but it would have to be some form of online course. Unfortunately when you work for yourself, regular times etc can be difficult.

Now there's an idea.

 

[Lefty]

When this poll came up, I was kind of hoping to see that more than 8 people in Australia would be interested :|

 

[user 4386]

Goldierocks, you were a lucky man to have worked at Tsumeb.

I ran across this page a while ago
http://www.mineralmasterpiece.com/Localities/Tsumeb.htm

Work is not quite how I would describe it when surrounded by all those magnificent pieces.

No it was a ball going down in the cage before first light when the winder driver had been on the turps, crawling up the scraper gullies in the square set stopes, being knocked down by miners as the roof started to fall (massive galena), being in a pillar as it collapsed (fortunately saved its 40 m drop until later that night), driving in convoy to avoid snipers.....but one is bulletproof in your mid-twenties.

Actually the minerals were even better than you could ever photograph, We would get open solutuion cavities in the limestone so big that you could walk into them, except you had to be careful not to cut yourself on the sharp crystals completely covering the walls so that sometimes little rock was visible (mimetite, azurite, malachite, cerrusite, dioptase, calcite, wulfenite.....crystals to many cm long. And the wierd sulphides like sulvanite, germanite, renierite, briartite, gallite, cadmian wurtzite). We ran out of names for new minerals - Stottite (Charlie Stott the mine manager), Gierite and Brunogierite (previous mine mineralogist), Tsumebite, Tsumcorite (Tsumeb Corporation)......either chalcocite or djurleite was first described from there.

At one time the government only issued two permits to legally collect specimens - me and my mate the mine mineralogist, John Innes. John died young of kidney failure in the Namib Desert when we worked there (dehydrated around Goanakontes) - he didn't drink enough in the Namib and dehydrated badly but hung in there. He described at least 5 new minerals from Tsumeb and Kombat, so after he died someone named a mineral after him - Johninnesite. His collection was worth a couple of million.

 

[user 4386]

And the rock fdrills have not left the hearing all that good.....

 

[user 4386]

Unfortunately an online course is as much work as a book, and there is the problem that, unlike when presenting face to face, every diagram and photo you must hold copyright for, which is a lot of drafting...