⭐ Gemstone & Mineral Show n Tell

Nice collection BigRed

Hard digging or surface specking?

Hard digging wally I go all out when I do things and try and make the most of it. My hand and arms are still killing me lol

Anyone know what the black rock is in that pic on the top right it's not see through?

The teenager and myself did a bit of classifying while trying for gold at Chapel Hill, SA, on the weekend. I think the bottom right 5 pieces are zircon, very bright and refractive. Anybody want to confirm or suggest something else? The largest of the 5 is about 5mm in width. I still need to make myself a saruca because flipping the classifier is not quite as effective!

All looks like quartz to me mate.

Heatho said:

All looks like quartz to me mate.

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ah thats a pity. In my defence they seem to have a couple of I think original faces intersecting at 90 degrees, not seen in the photo. And a much more adamantine lustre than the quartz found with it. But if quartz possibly just due to having extra waterlike clarity compared with the rest. Appreciate the input.

If only the little red rock was a lot bigger, that one's tiny but very good looking!

I could be wrong Thumper and it is very difficult to pic a gemstone from photos. Though I'm pretty sure they are quartz. If you have some very sensitive scales an SG test would go a long way to help identify them.

Check out the link.

https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=17698

Here are the stones from billabong blue dunny and I got. The weather was great to us. And bill was a great help. Will deffently be going back!!

And found this not sure what it is but its scratches glass

Well done fellas, a few nice stones there. Glad you had a great time up there.

I got to look at samples i got 2 weeks ago diamonds or not ? I did walk 5km with a pick\bucket\sieve\toolbelt with water scoop and gps to a creek where diamonds had been recovered before got 15 kg smple out the river and carried it back 5 km I was buggered

Hi all,

It's been a while since I got around to posting some finds.

I've been too busy observing water flows, sampling gullies and exploring while there is some water around.

Here's the best two stones I have managed to find so far. Both in the same location somewhere in the Kyneton-Daylesford-Castlemaine triangle. The blue one is 0.4ct. I also recovered over a gram of gold and found some other interesting rocks, minerals and specimens. More pics to come.

Just out of interest, what would people call a good sized stone for this area?

Could the blue stone be a sapphire? If not, what?

I have a lot to learn about gems

Both are sapphires mate. The darker one is a nice little crystal, when you get another hundred or so of those you could send off a nice little parcel to Thailand to be cut. Though yeah smallies like those are generally only good to show off as specimens. I think most of the stones in that area are very small, it's not a highly regarded quality gem sapphire deposit.

Darker one is a nice colour blue on blue, if it was around 4-6 ct it would be a beauty.

Colmaca said:

I got to look at samples i got 2 weeks ago diamonds or not ? I did walk 5km with a pick\bucket\sieve\toolbelt with water scoop and gps to a creek where diamonds had been recovered before got 15 kg smple out the river and carried it back 5 km I was buggered

https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/img/member-images/1543/1472102198_thu_aug_25_14-36-20.jpg

https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/img/member-images/1543/1472102198_thu_aug_25_14-37-50.jpg

https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/img/member-images/1543/1472102198_thu_aug_25_14-38-08.jpg

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Quartz Colmaca.

Thanks Heatho, I appreciate your comment.

I'm very happy to have these on my shelf with my small collection of gold. Most of the stones I have found are much smaller than these two so I will have to head up to sapphire country one day to look for some bigger ones.

I thought they might be sapphires but I didn't want to get my hopes up. I've only been prospecting for about six months and the amount of knowledge I have gained from forum members such as yourself has been phenomenal.

Time get back out into the creek to find another hundred...

My collection of dugway geodes, Las Choyas Coco Geodes, brazilian agates as well as a couple from agate creek.

What a great collection. You could make a nice feature wall with that lot.

Mike70.

Bezza said:

https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/img/member-images/3699/1463379734__20160516_162138.jpg

Sorry about the pic quality, but would anyone like to take a guess? It's a bit cloudy but very cool shape. I'm thinking quartz. Thanks for looking

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Hey Bezza,

I found this link in regarsds to rough diamonds - check it out - I agree with the other guys, your stone looks like quarz:

https://www.quora.com/What-can-I-do-to-determine-if-an-uncut-rough-stone-is-actually-a-diamond

Cheers, Tom

Hey guys, I finally managed to wash a couple of buckets material from Oberon last year and found some nice small Sapphires - heaviest one 1.4ct, the nice blue one around 1ct.
Does anybody have experience in sending stones for cutting/polishing overseas to places like Thailand?
Are there any trustworthy cutters/companys who would return the original stone (even though they are not worth a lot), I certainly wouldn't want a piece of glass in return..
Cheers, Tom