Rockhounding and Mineral Collecting

A sawmill.

Sawyers work in sawmills, sawing/cuttting the wood from lumberjacks into boards and planks. Carpenters use these materials to make usable goods.

Depends on how big the geode is, how big the interior crystals are, their color, and if there's any damage. Also big difference btw retail and wholesale; buying one from a high end Manhattan interior decorator, or a shipping container full from the mines inSouth America? One will be more expensive! A minutes work with a search engine will give you a multitude of examples from which to judge current pricing. There's even a forum called "Money Grubbers", on one of the top mineral collector's sites, where you can submit photos of specimens for evaluation by experts.

Pricing of geodes depends upon size, shape, damage, and what is inside. Eg. many tons of amethyst geodes are mined in Uruguay and Brazil; if the amethyst crystals are deep purple, large, and lustrous, the price goes up. Spectacularly large, beautifully formed, spangled with contrasting white calcite crystals, price goes up.

Prices range from $5-10 per pound; 2 meter tall monsters can go for five figures, and prices into the low six figures have been asked. Shipping is extra, but anybody with a house big enough to show off one of these things wouldn't have to fret much about that.

Talc

Halite will be easily soluble in water, calcite won't.

Calcite has excellent rhombohedral cleavage, halite has excellent cubic cleavage.

Halite will taste salty, calcite won't.

igneous rocks

No......Topaz is an 8 and Talc is a 1....talc is the softest on the scale

Value is too difficult to be accurate without seeing the gun. Condition which includes the amount of original finish and original configuration will determine value. Auto 5's with poly-chokes, compensators and recoil pads (other than Mag 12's) will reduce value. Near mint guns and original box will command an extra premium. Recommend taking it to a gun shop for appraisal.

Silicon carbide is the standard grit for tumbling rocks. It's cheap, easy to find, and has no competition. You could substitute crushed garnet, or even beach sand, or try running without grit at all, especially if you're tumbling softer stuff, but I think you'll find it's a waste of time.

Diamond's atomic structure makes it the hardest mineral known.

It is a pillar(those things that hold the roof and cylings) made of rocks

Your question asking what parts of a creek have the most gold is a very good one to ask, as there is a path course gold or any heavy metal will take in a stream bed.

As a river flows down stream. the river's width x5 equals the distance the river will change course, and the inside bends will catch the gold in a straight flow. The gold will hang up in lows behind large rocks in dips.

The delta bars on the inside corners on the up stream end of a rock bar will have heavier concentrates. Wide bends on the inside corners go back in time about half radius of the bend. This area is of old bedding and holds old gold deposits. It is best dug deep.

In the main flow of a stream, work the area under large rocks and behind lager structures.

Clay layers will stop gold from falling though rock gravel beds. Find clay and if there is black sand, there is gold in the layer.

Get some good books. Search Google for gold deposits.

your asking the wrong website

This would be quartz.

hardness and streak

chrome diopside and quartz are two different gemstones. Chrome diopside is sometime found along with quartz and hence the name.

Cleavage and fracture are determined by atomic structure and the relative weakness or strengths of the atomic bonds.

Sassafras Mountain is the highest point in South Carolina. It is located in Pickens County, in the Northwestern part of the state

It depends entirely on the condition and the date. A common-date, barely readable Indian Head penny might only be worth a few cents to a dollar. However, something like the 1909 S penny in perfect condition would be worth several hundred to a few thousand dollars.

Cut or rough? The latter will retail for something like ten bucks a pound. Try eBay, or a local rockshop or rock and gem club.

There are a variety of iron ores such as the minerals limonite, hematite, magnetite, that are rich in the element iron and mined extensively for the production of iron and steel.. These minerals, in addition to iron, contain other elements.

There are numerous minerals that are found in Italy. A few of the minerals are gold, gypsum, cadmium, feldspar, and pig iron.

Amber is most often used for jewelry. Paleontologists also study the insects trapped in amber, which are an incredible window into the past.

I suspect that the most collectible crystal, or at least the most popular mineral, produced in the largest volume for the collector market, is quartz. Literally tonnes of specimens are mined from huge operations in Arkansas, Brazil, Uruguay, as well as many US states and many other countries. It's found in many colors, often in large crystals, and is generally quite reasonably priced. In fact there are so many colors, localities, and varieties that some collectors have become extreme specialists and collect nothing but quartz!

Phantom quartz crystal, they form from changes in solution as the point is growing in the limestone strata, as the mineralization changes so dose the color of the phantom coated point in the point, and so on tell the solution aquifer has stop flow of sediment in solution. Many times if a stone shows a prism or rainbow effect. The stone is cracked. You are seeing the prism effect reflections. Pretty. But unstable.