My wife and I were down in Ligonier, PA this last weekend for a wedding. We took a leisurely drive down Friday, and arrive in the evening. The wedding wasn’t until 4:30pm Saturday evening. So we had a bunch of time to go off and do something Saturday morning/afternoon.
In my book Earth Treasures Volume 1-The Northeastern Quadrant by Allan W. Eckert, it lists a few places to hunt rocks in the area. A bunch of the places are quarries. But I was hesitant to try any of the places listed as a quarry, since they might have limited access.
There were a couple that I found that looked interesting. According to the book, there is a railroad cut about 2 miles north of Etna on SR-8. Supposedly there is Barite, Calcite, Pyrite, and Wurzite here. I looked this up, and it seemed like it would be about an hour and a half drive.
Another place I found listed was the Mount Pleasant area (Westmoreland county) which supposedly has amethyst in the fields. My wife loves amethyst! But this was still about about an hour drive away. This one wasn’t as bad since we were planning to go the Greensburg to check out a couple used book stores. And Mt Pleasant is only about 20 minutes south of there. But the book doesn’t say which fields. And since we don’t knwo the area.
But thus far, we have explored a few places in the book, and haven’t found any of the rocks that were supposed to be in those locations. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. Just that we haven’t found them. But our trust of the book is kind of shakey. So we were hesitant to drive very far with our limited time to go look for rocks that may or may not have been there. But then it would have been cool to have found some nice pieces of amethyst.
Maybe next time we get down to Pennsylvania.
According to the book Earth Treasures Volume 1-The Northeasten Quadrant, there is supposed to be labradorite at Canadice Lake in New York. The book says from the east side of Canadice Lake to 2 miles west of Honeoye Lake. The keys say that it can be found On the surface and/or in the soil; in washes, ravines, gullies, draws, ditches; loose on shoreline.
So my wife and I have been wanting to get down there and explore. We have planned to do it a couple times before, but there weather has turned out bad. But today I was determined to do it. And what do you know, the weather was pretty bad. We had periodic storms passing through.
On the way down, it alternated between kind of sunny, to torrential downpours. Fortunatly when we got to the lake, it wasn’t raining. You need a permit to access Canadice Lake, but you can get them online. They are free. I parked along the side of the road, and walked down to the lake’s edge. I explored in the water, and along the shore, but didn’t see anything that resembled the pictures I had seen of labradorite. There was also a little stream going into the lake, and I looked here as well. Nothing.
We got back into the car, and head farther south along the lake. There was a small stream feeding into the lake. So we stopped there. I walked up the stream bed hunting for labradorite. Again, I didn’t see any rocks that had anything like the green/blue colors of labradorite.
Next we headed to the boat launch area, and explored the shoreline of the lake. Still nothing.
All together, we spent about an hour and a half looking at rocks and found nothing remotely promising as being labradorite. It is possible there is labadorite there, and we were just looking in the wrong spots. Maybe labradorite is here, but in very small quanities. Or maybe we were actually seeing labradorite, but didn’t know what were looking at. Maybe labradorite is plain looking on the outside. Though I saw pictures of it on the web, and even the plainer looking uncut specimens had a subtle blue/green hue to them. Or maybe the labradorite from this area is a plainer variation, and doesn’t have the blue/green colors? Or maybe the book is in error, and there is no labradorite here at all?
Maybe next time we got the lapidary society club meeting thing that we joined, I will ask them if they know anything about labradorite. I’ll have to see if I can find an email address for the author of the book to see where he got his information.
On our outing to Penfield Quarry on Saturday we found some pieces of fluorite. A few of the people there said it would glow under a black light. Cool! I used to have black lights when I was a kid, along with the various fuzzy black light posters. I might even have a black light bulb still packed away somewhere, but if I do, I don’t know where it would be.
So I headed out yesterday to buy a black light bulb. I stopped in a Home Depot. They had a 24″ black light bulb, and an 18 inch black light bulb. They were not cheap either. I think the 18 inch bulb was like $12 maybe. Not sure. I looked for a portable fixture that could be plugged into a wall, but didn’t find one, and I didn’t have a lot of time. I looked around some more, and found a 75 watt incadescent black light bulb. And it was only $4. So I bought it and headed out.
When I got home last night, I screwed it into a lamp, and turned it on. I held the fluorite and other rocks under the dim light, and they didn’t seem to noticibly glow at all. We turned off the lights, and still nothing. It was still somewhat light, so we waited till after dark. Again, no glow. Hmmmm…
We thought the light might be too dim, or maybe the incadescent light has the frequency or something.
Today at lunch, I stopped at Lowes. I found the 24 and 18 inch black light bulbs. The 18 bulb was only $9 here. I went in search of a fixture and found them. I found some fluorescent fixtures the plug into the wall. I found one that would fit the 18 inch bulb for $17. But then my buddy whow as with me found a fixture that already came with a black light bulb! We could find the price. But when I took it to the check out, it was only $20. Nice! I bought it.
When I go back to work I searched for information about black lights and rocks. I was surprised to learn there are different black lights. Long wave (UV-A), medium wave (UV-B), and short wave (UV-C). It seems that the black light I bought is likely to be a long wave. And that what I need to make the rocks glow is a short wave black light. A mid wave black light is what they use on CSI to make bodily fluids glow. Hmmm. I did a search of short wave black lights and found they are expensive. Ouch! I will try the light I bought, and if it doesn’t do much, maybe I will return it. Or maybe I will keep it. Maybe long wave black light will work on different rocks. I will have to do more research.
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Added-
I tried the black light when I got home. Unfortunatly the fluorite didn’t glow. It had a slight pruple color to it, but then everything had a slight purple color to it under the light. I think we will need to get a short wave, or medium wave black light. I will comtinue to do reasearch and see if I can find one of these for a reasonable price. I just can’t justify spending hundreds of dollars on a light just to see the rocks glow. There is always the possibility that what we have is not fluorite and the geology students that identified it as fluorite were wrong.
We did get some reaction with the black light from some other rocks. A couple rocks that had a bunch of dolomite on them, had some spots of a dim yellow glow. When we turned the lights on, we didn’t see anything different in those spots.
I have known about the Penfield Quarry for a long time, and have always wanted to visit it. Even before I got into rockhounding. Ellison Park, a local park that I have hiked many times, borders on the quarry, and I always wanted to go explore it. But I haven’t wanted to trespass on private property.
My wife and I joined a local rock club, and they had a field trip to the Penfield Quarry today. I had loaded most of the stuff in the car last night. We had to be at the quarry at 6:45am. I set my alarm for 5:15, and was awake before it went off. I get up, and vegged for a while and then got dressed, and finished loading the car. I brought all the tools I thought I might need. Basically the same kind of stuff I took to dig for Herkimer Diamonds. Sledges, bullpoint chisel, crack hammers, screens, pick axe, wedges, etc. I also packed our new hard hats. And we both wore our new steel toed boots.
We arrived at the quarry a little after 6:30 and there were a bunch of people already there. We hung out by our car, not sure what to do. Eventually we saw people heading inside the building, so we followed them. We signed a release form. Then it was time to head down into the quarry. We headed back to our car, and followed the line of cars to the area with filled with boulders.
We donned our hardhats, and headed to look at the boulders. We weren’t sure what to do, so we watched other people. I knew we were after fluorite, but I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. I had seen pictures in my books, but that didn’t help. I asked a couple guys, and they said the fluorite was in vugs. Okay. So we got our tools, and started busting rock. I was splitting open cracks. We pretty much only found dolomite, these little white crystals. We moved to a different area, and were busting on some rocks. I found a big rock that was already cracked. I worked at splitting it open more to see what was inside. More dolomite and calcite. I managed to tear some skin off of one of my fingers, and came close to breaking one of my legs when the rock I was standing on moved. Oh the fun of it!
Someone found something and everyone got excited. I went down to look at it was a tiny crystal that sort of looked like a short brown pine needle. Apparently it is rare.
We also found some selenite which was kind of cool looking. I found a big yellowish cystal on top of some dolomite as well as some tiny clear crystals. I showed them to a couple other guys who looked like they knew what they were doing. these turned out to be calcite. It looked different than the calcite we found at the herkimer mines. Then we found a tiny brown crystal mixed in with dolomite. I showed it to one of the geology students, and he told me what it was. I thought it started with “sph” and ended with “ite”. Not sure. I looked in my books when I got home. Maybe he said it was a Sphalerite. We found another one as well.
Then I found a piece covered with dolomite, and a tiny speck of purple. It almost looked like an amethyst. I showed it to the geology student and he said it was fluorite and got all excited at this tiny bit. I commented that I thought that it would be larger. I showed him where I thought I got it, and he asked if he could work the rock. I told him go ahead. He worked it for a bit, then moved on.
We kept working at vugs and breaking rocks. A little while later, I found part of a crystal with some blue in it. This was larger. I showed it to another guy and he said it was fluorite. I went back and found there was more under where I found the piece. I set about with the crack hammer and bullpoint chisel to break away the rock around the fluorite. It was tough. I didn’t want to destroy the flourite. I worked my way in towards the fluorite. The big piece of fluorite was already broken into smaller pieces, and I started pulling out the pieces. We collected a handfull of fluorite pieces. We showed them to the college student. He and his friends ooohed and ahhed over the pieces. I showed them where I got it. There was still a little bit left showing. I let them have the rock. He and he friends went to work trying to break it apart.
My wife and I were hungry and tired, so we headed home. We will probably try to come back next time they let people in. It was kind of fun.
On our recent trip digging for Herkimer Diamonds, I also picked up and kept chunks of calcite. I didn’t know what it was until someone told me. I am still learning all this stuff. But it looked interesting, and some of it was hard to tell from the diamonds (quartz) while it was dirty/muddy anyway. It was just easier to throw it in the bag.
But now that we are home, I have been cleaning up all the stuff we found. I am actually surprised at how many small chunks of calcite that we collected. Most are small, but a few pieces are larger with small pieces of rock attached.
I was reading stuff on the web and I found some stuff talking about the calcite. From what I understand, the calcite is one of the last things to form, and can form around the quartz crystals. So some of my small hunks of calcite might have Herkimer diamonds inside them. I know for sure a couple pieces do since the crystal is partially exposed.
But something else I learned was that the calcite can be disolved by soaking it in white vinegar.
So I took a few of the chunks of calcite with exposed quartz crystals, and set them in a bowl with distilled white vinegar. Right away, tiny bubbles started coming off the calcite. I kept checking back and I could see the quartz crystals becoming more and more exposed as the calcite was slowly eaten away. I placed some more pieces of calcite in the vinegar that may or may not have Herkimer diamonds in them. When I got up the this morning, the chunks were smaller. The bubbling action seemed to have stopped, so I replaced the used vinegar with some fresh vinegar.