April 2021 Program Information
April 2021 Program
Mike Papst showed us some minerals he had ordered online. They were from North Star Mine, Mammoth, Juab Co, UT and the Eureka Mine, UT.“Eurekadumpite” (in Greek – I have found it- dump) which were beautiful light blue balls. Tony Nikischer (a club member) was the last author to publish an article about it.
Here is the link to photos and info:
https://www.mindat.org/min-39785.html
“Quetzaalcoatlite” (named for the Aztec god - the Plumed Serpent) This was also a light blue with spikes. This is so small it was very hard to describe and a synchrotron (using high-energy photons) was used in IL to study the crystal patterns. Go to this site to see photos:
https://www.mindat.org/min-3343.html
Jack Glenn entertained us with a slide show called “Good Vibrations” about the use of an oscillating flat lap.
He went through the process and gave a few pointers he learned from his experiences:
• Use 4 or less pieces in the pan
• Weights need to cover the entire piece to avoid ‘holidays’ on the edges
• Use pieces of PVC pipe as dividers to keep materials from colliding with each other
• Blue-package plumber’s putty is better than red-packaged plumber’s putty for keeping weights on top of materials in process
• Patience, patience is a must! Depending on the process/type of material it may take from 3-4 hours or 8-24 hours of activity per stage to accomplish the needed degree of smoothness prior to proceeding to the next stage
• Cleaning carefully between each stage (180 - 220 - 400 - 600 mesh grits), pre-polishing (1200 mesh grit) and polishing with Mighty-X (0.3 corundum-based polish) produces a quality product
He showed photos of many pieces he had polished, which included various types of jasper, blue quartz, tiger-eye, mtorolite, Picasso marble, pietersite, reef amethyst, sodalite, & unakite were some that we saw.