Anyone who could say something about what these are?
Hi,
As others have stated before, you can’t provide a definitive identification based on photos. The best i can give you is a guess. I would say, just looking at the photos that the white stone is quartz, and the other one is Garnet. Your best bet is to contact a local club and see if anyone there can help.
Best of luck,
Daniel
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I agree the white one is quartz. I don’t know about the orange one. Did all of that loose stuff crumble off of it or did you hit it with something to see how it would cleave?
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Agreed there is no positive or even very certain ID from a photo, particularly when it isn’t a known patterned mineral like sodalite or chrysocolla. Also agree with Daniel that the orangish one is probably garnet because of the ill defined, but present crystal faces and the color and the brittleness of opaque garnet like that, which I’ve seen be crumbly, to use a scientific term (LOL). The white one is possibly quartz. Because of its ubiquity, that is the best guess, but aren’t there other things that might be translucent and in the Mohs 6-7.5 hardness range that the sharpish fractures (wow, another scientific term!) would suggest?
I would advise taking an SG on both these materials. Just get an appropriately sized scale and a plastic vessel filled with water. Then glue a piece of thread to the material with CA glue, which will hold long enough to get the measurements. One measurement with the specimen suspended and completely submerged in the water and another with the specimen resting on the bottom of the container. Divide the bigger number by the smaller and you have an SG! If you need more specifics, PM me. Great way to start ID of field specimens based on a list of approximate SGs. Then add observations based on scratch hardness testing (fingernail, copper penny, steel knife of known hardness, glass, quartz specimen, synthetic corundum, etc.), crystal habit, if any, fracture pattern/cleavage (irregular, conchoidal, smooth, etc.), opacity/translucence/transparency, inclusions, color, etc., etc. More than you wanted to know, but, help, I’m talking about gems and minerals and can’t get up…(;>)
-royjohn
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