Not Gold, but still neat

[Maine Digger]

Irish, I thought you might like to see this piece of quartzite with turmalene crystals embedded in it. I check along old stone walls for bottle dumps, and this was sitting on one. So technically it was found while looking for bottles[]

 

[Maine Digger]

I was talking with a guy this weekend who pans for gold in the western mountains of our state, Maine. Evidently, there's a fair amount of 'specs' to be found but not too many nuggets! Here's a close up of the turmaline crystals in the stone above, if they were only gold.....[&:]

 

[IRISH]

Nice specimen of Schorl Tourmaline there Norm, keep on looking there you may get a red one [] . We get a bit of that in good sized bits here in the pegmatite zones in some granitic areas, in the creek just next to this house there is brown and green Dravite Tourmalines but they are mostly very small.
Nice stuff to find [] .

 

[Maine Digger]

Hi Irish, The pictures really don't do it justice, the manner that the Schorl crystals are arrayed is interesting. It's not worth anything as a gem, but we have found some nice ones here. Are you familar with the watermellon crystal found here in Maine? It's 10 inches long, 3 inches in diameter, and called the Jolly Green Giant.[] In 1971 at the Dunton Dig, hundreds of kilos of gem grade tourmaline was mined. The JGG is now on display in our Smithsonian Institute. About ten years ago, a couple of guys pulled out a world record morganite crystal as well. Hmmm. where's there one there might be others....Here's a pix of the JGG.

 

[IRISH]

I have heard of that crystal but didn't know it was quite that big, I think I will have to get across to your part of the world [] .