Gravelwasher Posted November 19, 2013 Report Share Posted November 19, 2013 Made it out Sunday with a good friend to the hunting grounds. Had a blast hiking all over the place and digging everything from square nails to a rusted out pocket knife. We hit one spot and decided to do a bit of clearing and overburden removal, and agreed to split the finds. I gave a stump the old mule kick as my partner had a good feeling about what was under it. Cleared away some ground and bam he got a nice signal right where the stump was. Turned out to be a nice little 3.5 gram pc. Was first detected with a GPX4500 and a sadie coil, I put my new to me 5000 over it with the 11" mono and it sounded great!! Good luck to all and get some au under those coils!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oakview2 Posted November 20, 2013 Report Share Posted November 20, 2013 That is a purty piece... Congrats Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matt Posted November 20, 2013 Report Share Posted November 20, 2013 Great piece! I bet I know right where that one came from. Found one just like it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adam Posted November 20, 2013 Report Share Posted November 20, 2013 Amazing looking nugget / crystal....... Congrats !! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boulder dash Posted November 20, 2013 Report Share Posted November 20, 2013 What the hell look at that think amazing character Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gravelwasher Posted November 20, 2013 Author Report Share Posted November 20, 2013 Lol, you guys make me smile!! Thanks Adam, Boulder, and Oakview2, I am liking it too! Matt, I heard you may have found a few like this. We tried for more but couldn't coax any more out, you all did a good job beeping it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roo Posted November 20, 2013 Report Share Posted November 20, 2013 Yeah nice bit for sure. What do they call those type of marks or structure, "striations?" I think, that's comes to mind for some reason? Very nice! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wes Posted November 20, 2013 Report Share Posted November 20, 2013 Roo, Its called Hoppering.A hopper crystal is a form of crystal, defined by its "hoppered" shape.The edges of hoppered crystals are fully developed, but the interior spaces are not filled in. This results in what appears to be a hollowed out step lattice formation, as if someone had removed interior sections of the individual crystals. In fact, the "removed" sections never filled in, because the crystal was growing so rapidly that there was not enough time (or material) to fill in the gaps. The interior edges of a hoppered crystal still show the crystal form characteristic to the specific mineral, and so appear to be a series of smaller and smaller stepped down miniature versions of the original crystal.Hoppering occurs when the anisotropy of the solid–liquid inter-facial energy and the kinetics of atom attachment at the interface are both important. For example, when electrical attraction is higher along the edges of the crystal, this causes faster growth at the edges than near the face centers. This attraction draws the mineral molecules more strongly than the interior sections of the crystal, thus the edges develop more quickly. However, the basic physics of the this type of growth is the same as that of dendrites but, because the anisotropy in the solid–liquid inter-facial energy is so large, the dendrite so produced exhibits a faceted morphology.Hoppering is common in many minerals, including lab-grown bismuth, galena, quartz (called skeletal or fenster crystals), gold, calcite, halite (salt), and water (ice). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roo Posted November 20, 2013 Report Share Posted November 20, 2013 Ha, very good explanation. I think I found one with hoppering about 13 yrs ago. I still have it. It has that inside a sort of cavity where it looks like sort of steps going down. It weighs 4.5g. I will try to take a picture of it to show you guys and see if that's what it is. Will be hard to do as its in the cavity but ill give it a go. I have another bit that might be that too with those type of markings on its side. Will post them on here tomorrow for you to take a look at. No one I know was ever able to tell me exactly what it was, hopefully its that. Cheers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fi4451 Posted November 20, 2013 Report Share Posted November 20, 2013 Wow Wes, thanks for the explanation- very detailed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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