UV Lights and Fluorescent Minerals - a fun side hobby to metal detecting !

[KingTotsalot]

Stephanie Blandin and KingTotsalot made a run over to the Memphis Agri-Complex to see the 2024 Memphis Club’s Rock, Gem & Mineral Show. It is about a 3.5 hour drive from Little Rock, AR, and we decided to forego lunch until we had spent our time looking around. Since KT am not interested in jewelry or beads and such, He managed to scope out all the pertinent dealers in a little over 1.5 hours. He saw lots of fluorescent minerals, but few specimens in His Royal price range (under $20) that I did not have. Some mineral dealers even had a table of nothing but fluorescent specimens! Getting pretty popular KT thinks.

Stephanie moves a bit slower than KT and as a lady is interested in jewelry and loose cut stones, so she took an addition 40 minutes to peruse the tables, which was fine with KT as He sat in the Royal Coach in the shade and took a nap until she called and said I am headed to the entrance.

At one booth His Majesty found a tray with 6 large flat ruby crystals, marked $12 each. Checking with the Royal LW lamp, 2 crystals had superior red fluorescence, so they were purchased. No location given, but from the size and crystallization, KT knew they were from the Mysore Corundum Deposits in Karnatakah State, India. There are a couple of pictures on Mindat.org that have this flat hexagonal form, with triangular stepped growths on the C pinacoid face and a touch of black biotite associated, like these crystals. First picture shows the natural light color as a purplish red, and the second picture shows the strong red response to LW 365nm. No response to MW or SW.

After looking at several booths with over priced fluorescents that KT already has in the Royal collection, He came across a dealer’s table with 5 pieces of “Zebra” Stromatolite. Knowing that stromatolites often fluoresce, KT put the Royal LW lamp on it and it had a nice yellow-orange striped response. It was the only piece not priced, typical, and the dealer gave KT a price of $10, so it was purchased. It came with a decent label. There are 3 pictures of this specimen, the first being in natural light, the second in LW 365nm, and the third in MW 310nm. No response to SW.

After leaving the show, both Stephanie and KT were hungry for seafood, which we found in abundance at the King Krab bistro, a small hole in the wall cafe specializing in an amazing assortment of seafood, cajun and otherwise! After eating our fill, we drove over to Forrest City, Arkansas, filled up with fuel, and headed back to the Castle by way of the old Memphis Highway 70.

A good time was had by all!

Enjoy the pictures!

 

[KingTotsalot]

KT decided that He would like his Royal and Loyal Subjects to see His Majesty's birthstone ring! It is a synthetic star ruby, the stone being made by the Linde Star Company, back in the late 1950s. The process was discovered by two company researchers who were investigating the large scale manufacturing of small rubies for precision instrument bearings in the early stages of WWII. The process was filed away since the original company was not interested in larger gem grade rubies, but in small stones for the federal government contract they had to fulfill. In the early 1950s, the same two researchers had not forgotten what they had learned and they formed the Linde Star Company, and began to make synthetic rubies and sapphires of various colors for the mid-range priced jewelry market. In the late 1950s, the Chinese figured out how to make the stones, and soon flooded the world market with cheap star sapphires. This action ruined the profit margin of the US company, and drove them out of business. The last of their stock of finished stones was bought up by one individual, and he has slowly marketed them, set in sterling silver, for both men and ladies as custom jewelry pieces. KT ordered this ring in its custom setting from that same gentleman in the early 1980s, at a total cost of $99.....eBay had not begun to collect taxes on dealer's sales at that time! HA HA

FYI, KT's ring finger size is a 12, so the ring is rather massive looking.

His Majesty, whenever He wears this ring, gets an immediate response from most ladies in the room, and if they notice that it presents a nice star, they cannot quit looking at it! KT has noticed a very strong affinity for Oriental women to ask about it also!

Enjoy the photos! Being a ruby, it is fluorescent red in LW 365nm as you will see in the 3rd picture. The first picture shows the stone and its color in diffuse light, second picture is in either the sun or a point light, when the star appears.

 

[KingTotsalot]

Today KT has for your viewing interest a larger specimen from near Pocahontas, Randolph County, Arkansas. This was picked up on a pile of loose rock, apparently scooped from one of the local abandoned zinc mines by the County Maintenance crew. There are several abandoned mines and prospects in Randolph County, the last activity being in the early 1950s, before the Federal Government dropped their price support for zinc ores in 1955. It was collected by Sara Patton, a geologist for the Office of State Geologist, while doing field mapping in the area in early 2024. Randolph County is on the far eastern end of this type of mineralization in the Arkansas Ozarks Region.

The specimen consists of a sliver of fine-grained carbonate rock, coated with pink dolomite crystals which are then covered by coarse-grained sphalerite cleavages.

The first picture shows the specimen in natural light, and the second in LW 365nm UV. There is weak MW 310nm response and no SW 254nm response, no pictures. KT does not remember ever checking any of the numerous specimens He had at one time in His Royal collection of Arkansas sphalerite crystals or cleavage examples, so His Majesty cannot state if this fluorescence is common for sphalerite specimens from North Arkansas or not. Sphalerite is known from many worldwide locations to be fluorescent, generally in an orange color in LW UV.

 

[KingTotsalot]

KT ordered this specimen because of the coarse, almost pegmatitic, grain size of the Willemite. The sample consists of Calcite, Willemite, and Franklinite (NF) from the Sterling Hill Mine, Ogdensburg, Sussex County, New Jersey. The calcite and willemite are fluorescent in LW365nm, MW 310nm, and SW 254nm. Most people consider this rock as a SW specimen, but it is obvious from these pictures, this particular specimen is spectacular in all 3 wavelengths!

The first picture is in natural light, the second in LW 365nm... Notice the calcite is more pinkish red than in the other pictures. The 3rd picture is in MW 310nm, and the 4th is in SW 254nm. In MW and SW the calcite has close to the same response, orange with slight red overtones.

Enjoy the pictures!