Thread: What do I Have???

I got this hone from a guy in a flea market and I do Not know what it is I think it is a Belgian Yellow cutical but am not sure it is very fine.

Hard to tell from these pictures. If you create some slurry of this stone and look at it under the microscope you will see the red garnets if it is a coticule.

Ok thanks I will bring it to school tuesday and look at it under one of the school microscopes, the garnets should be the red octoginal shaped things right

A bit like this: http://www.belgischerbrocken.com/

Take the German language site, look under INFOS and then you can see the picture already. Nex to it it says: Mkroskopisches Ergebnis.....

Good luck!

Most common Garnets are reddish-brown and are 12 sided dodecahedrons though garnets can come in many colors depending on their makeup.

My vote is yes, it's a coticule. The grain on the purple/blue side is pretty tell tale of Belgians. It looks like a blue/yellow bonded stone instead of anatural from that odd seam in the first photo. Look at it from the side and see if it is two pieces glued together. MNost newer ones are glued to slate but many older ones were glued to blue. There are also naturally occuring blue/yellow homogenous stones, "naturals" that are hard to find now days.

Tony

The Stone is glued together the stone is a blond and a purple though i thought it was slate until I saw the knocked out corner and it dose not have the cleavage of any slate that you see around the creeks and rivers around here, today I looked at it under a microscope without any slurry and couldn't really see anything so i am going to a different teacher (A Earth Scientist) instead of a Biologist to see if he can tell without looking at it

thanks for all the Help Guys I'll let ya know tomorrow

Slate is slate and all slate has the same cleavage. However thats if you take a piece and strike it along its cleavage plane. If you just chip it it will just break off without showing its cleavage. Same as a diamond-strike it just right and it cleaves, strike it wrong and it breaks into a zillion pieces. Also, though most slate is greyish blue I have seen slate more reddish-brown. It depends where its from and the mineral content of its grains.

The pix are kind of small and I can't see the detail of the stones but the colors look right for a belgian coticule with a blue back or a "natural" stone as the belgians call it. Hope you got a great deal!