Thread: Coticule Slurry BS?

Some years ago when I lived in Nebraska, I used to go up in the Black Hills of South Dakota and pan for gold. I'd find some gold, but in some areas there were lots and lots of garnets in the bottom of my green plastic gold pan, along with the normal "black sand". The garnets are heavier than most dirt and rock pieces and would naturally end up in the bottom of the pan. I've seen them from the range of sizes of little reddish brown speck about like this period -> . to some up around the size of this smiley -> Digging out the magnifying glass they were always kind of funny rounded objects with facets. Over around Keystone and some of that area you could find pieces of river rock that had garnets protruding right out of the rock that you could really see. Some like small diamonds, much larger than what one would normally find in the pan. So, with the Coticule, I would think they are a mixture of pieces like this in the "clay" part of the rock. Sedimentary, but with the layers of fine micron and sub-micron particles composing the main rock. But, if they were sedimentary and deposited as tiny worn down pieces of an original crystal, it would make sense that they no longer held their same shape they once had. Perhaps crushed by larger rocks and ground a bit, the abrasive waxed strong in the rock and had the ability to abrade steel.

Glen has often said, and he is right, that there is more to the hone than the abrasive. There is the filler and the binders as well. All of this contributed to the work and working of a hone be it man made of one made by God, and hewn out of the earth by man. I would like to think that the Coticule has some of the intact crystals that relegate themselves to the microscope that are not crushed beyond recognition. Perhaps they do exist. I've not seen a SEM image of the surface of a Coticule. And, they are as different as individual snow flakes, yet snow is snow.

Originally Posted by mainaman

I have looked at the slurry with SEM and I too was not able to see shapes as described by Ardennes.
May be they have a better method of creating slurry to preserve the garnets intact?

Perhaps you could disolve the clay with an acid to leave the garnets intact?

I am still acting the devil's advocate, but did you ever reflect that you can only lap something very badly with a piece of hardened steel and abrasive grains, which just roll freely about? The process becomes much faster with a piece of brass, copper or even tin alloy into which the grains becomed embedded. It just doesn't seem reasonable that turning the garnets loose would improve performance.

People like Norton who make synthetic abrasive wheels attach a lot of importance to the strength of the bond between the grains. Make it too weak, obviously, and the stone wears away too quickly, losing its shape. But make it too hard, and you end up with a surface of bluntened and therefore less effective grains.

I have suggested that the use of a slurry stone removes metallic clogging. How many stones remain exactly the same colour they were before touching steel? It may also be that it exposes new, unbluntened grains, whatever they are made of.

So what, folks, no more science, and scientific experienced talk?? Come on, I feel a bit disappointed...

Matt

Originally Posted by matisso

So what, folks, no more science, and scientific experienced talk?? Come on, I feel a bit disappointed...

Matt

OK, fine. I'll give you one of the cheers of the Harvard Band...

e to the X, dX, dY.
e to the Y, dY
Cosine, secant, tangent, sine.
3.24159.
Come on Harvard, give 'em a digit!

At which point a particular finger was extended to the opposing team's fans in the stadium.

It was funny if you were drunk and a hundred other people were doing it too.

This may have been the pinnacle of my scientific knowledge.

Originally Posted by Utopian

OK, fine. I'll give you one of the cheers of the Harvard Band...

e to the X, dX, dY.
e to the Y, dY
Cosine, secant, tangent, sine.
3.24159.
Come on Harvard, give 'em a digit!

At which point a particular finger was extended to the opposing team's fans in the stadium.

It was funny if you were drunk and a hundred other people were doing it too.

This may have been the pinnacle of my scientific knowledge.

shouldn't it be 3.14159?

edit: oh yeah, you were drunk

Originally Posted by hoglahoo

shouldn't it be 3.14159?

edit: oh yeah, you were drunk

Ha! Yes, it was a typo and should have been a one.
(So much for my pinnacle!)

I always surmised the way it happens is the rock matrix wears away making slurry and the garnets are exposed at the top and do their cutting and eventually they have to come lose and fall out and get mixed in to the slurry. That process just continues as the stone wears. Whether you have individual garnets or broken pieces or deformed xtls doesn't matter much. Garnets are very common minerals and they form in all kinds of matrix. I used to collect them in a Schist matrix at a quarry in Connecticut and the rock exposed at the quarry walls was rotted and you could extract the garnets with your fingers and you could collect them loose on the ground where they weathered out of the country rock.

Originally Posted by Utopian

So, does anyone know of a photograph of coticule slurry that shows intact garnets?

(sorry for the thread resurrection, but...)

I was surprised that I could not find such an image, so I snapped these:

coti_slurry_clean_10 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

fuzzychops, those photos are awesome! I hope you have more stones to take pictures of