When Bonnie comes to the shop all excited, it usually means she wants to show me something.
I was polishing a batch of Petoskey Stones when she appeared to tell me it was raining and all the my Greenstone-infested mine rocks were lit up with Greenstone. I had only a small pile of rubble outside that I have been working Greenstones out of them, off and on. Most of these rocks only have small Greenstone in them, and those I keep for teacher specimens. Sometimes a larger Greenstone may appear, and sometimes I see what appears to be a small Greenstone, and it turns out it’s really a big Greenstone. Let’s take a look:
Some of my tailings pile rock appears to be full of Greenstone, but it is full of, what most Greenstone hunters call “Half-baked Greenstone” or “Greenstone wannabes”. This material is dark and soft, showing no pattern. The wannabes usually occur in softer mine rock, whereas the good Greenstone occurs in hard rock (hard rock=hard greenstone). I’ve included a picture of this Half-baked material. This softer material may contain Chlorastrolite, but is mostly Chlorite. Unfortunately, like most of my fellow Greenstone hunters, I wasted a lot of time, over the years, on this half-baked dull junk. Not every green stone is our beloved gemstone Greenstone!
Today I found one rock that I could see had a Greenstone poking out from the surface. I thought, based on my experience, that I might be able to break the rock open, and the little Greenstone might pop out. I whacked that mine rock and I broke that small Greenstone right in half. IT WAS A BIG-UN! I don’t mind at all that the stone broke in half. Now I can make two Greenstones!
This particular Greenstone has a center filled with some type of Zeolite. Often the Zeolites in Greenstones is soft and rotten, but this stone seems to be solid. The extraction now involves carefully cutting out the stones. More work, but the rewards may be worth the extra effort. Based on the thousands of these I’ve cut, I will not get real excited unless the final gemstone is finished and really is a worthy Gemstone.
Because of my workload right now, I cannot show you a finished piece and we don’t know if it’s a winner or a loser. The end of this story will have to wait…sorry!
to be continued
“You can’t count on a Greenstone Gem until the finished stone comes off the polisher”-Don Reed 2019
You can read more about Greenstones:
The State Gem https://statesymbolsusa.org/symbol-official-item/michigan/state-gem-gemstone/isle-royale-greenstone
Inclusions in Greenstone https://www.snobappealjewelry.com/blog/the-shades-and-patterns-of-greenstone-chlorastrolite/