Thread: Rock hunting in Canada!!

Alright, all this amazing talk about natural hones is making me want to go rock hunting!!! I'm in Nova Scotia and it's full of lots of different rock structures. There seems to be an abundance of 'shale' which is similar in its properties to slate.Shale and slate are both metamorphic materials and the two terms are sometimes use interchangeably, but the materials are not the same. Many of the items sold today for landscaping (flagstones, retaining walls) and construction (chalkboards, roofing tiles, pool tables, etc.) uses as "slate " is actually the much more inferior form—shale. Shale is metamorphic clay-like sediments, lightly compacted into thin, crumbly layers. It may contain high concentrations of quartz, feldspars, pyrites amorphous silica, and clay minerals: illite, kaolinite, chlorite and smectite (montmorillionite). This smectite clay is a highly absorbent component that can swell to several times it's normal size, making the shale loose strength. Slate on the other hand is much stronger and does not absorb water (remember how fast those school blackboards would dry when you had to stay after class?) Generally, it has much greater strength. However, certain types of slate still may be less than desirable. There also is a high calcite/dolomite form of slate called Marl Slate, from Durham, UK, which can be softer and easily attacked by acids.If i'm looking at 'slate' or 'shale' is anything that is surface exposed going to be good enough? I'm going to try to find a few pieces that are CLOSE to being flat and test them out on a junker to see what I come up with!Any tips (MichaelC) or others, would be appreciated

I've read through multiple geological surveys and within 15 minutes from my house there are vast slate deposits ranging from purple to black to gray to greenish-grey etc. I'm hoping to go hunt a few of these this week with my hammer and see what I can pull out of the ground. If the color of slate is related, in some way, to it's composition i'm hoping to see if there is stuff that compared to my welsh slate hones. Apparently the thuringian/escher stones are also a slate and match these colours. Woohoo!Oh, if at any time I start to sound stupid, feel free to correct me or rain on my parade.

Holy crap Jeremy......

Originally Posted by ironsidegnr

Holy crap Jeremy......

DON'T JUDGE ME MATT!

Shale is a purely sedimentary rock. Shale and slate are similar because slate is shale that has gone through the metamorphism process.

I have already found a few slate slabs that look quite nice and slurry like a beast. I immediately noticed that the slurry was MUD like, which makes sense. I'm not sure I'd attempt using that on a blade but the quartz, iron oxide content can apparently be quite high in these rocks, which is what we want, right?

Good luck in your search! Very adventurous. If I had thought about it when I was living there I might have done the same thing.

The good thing about rock hunting is they can't run very fast...

Good luck!!


I might do the same thing this fall in my area, if I can get there before it snows

If you do not want to put your blade to it Henk showed me his testing way of unknown rocks. He uses old tea spoon which is realy easy repolish between tests.