Meanwhile, Garnets

My shop being currently in an uproar, I had to move my stockpile of crated glendonites out to the side yard; and my finer collections (mostly the pyramidite) is in wooden boxes still in the shop -- but under all these remod tools and supplies...

So I decided to snap a picture of one of my garnet collections because it's easy to get to!

Pyramidite Imaged with my MotoZine

Site Revamp

It's time to take the glendonite website to the next level, so I've disconnected it from the server and am doing a complete rebuild. I've got about three times as much info as is displayed in the current site; and when I set it up, I was a bad boy and did not normalize the image naming conventions to my system before using them. Plus I'd failed to establish a scheme for the web files that would reflect the correct organization of the material. So now I've rebuilt the site's folders and have renamed all the images and sorted them correctly.

Version 2 of the site will be 900 pixels wide instead of 800, and I've set it up so any portion can be easily updated with new and more information. Essentially every page in the site has to be redesigned because the changEs I'm making are quite radical compared with the present layout.

Hopefully it won't take me more than a couple more weeks to get it done. Then my next task is to set up a photo booth so I can take some really sharp, pleasant and high-res images of the best of my collection. I'll capture some with a ruler included so I can post them on Mindat.org. I've got a Canon *istD digital SLR with an 8 GB chip and a great tripod.

Regarding my envisioned collection of examples from all the known localities: I've got a couple dozen from NSW-AU, and Kola Russia. After the new site is online I'm going to ramp up my efforts to make trades or purchases to finish up this collection. I don't know what exactly I'm intending to do with, other than show it on the main locality page. But it sure will be cool to have accomplished it. I doubt anyone else has ever done so.

In the Interim

Wow that was a long time between posts. After I mucked up revealing that plate crystal with my Aeroscribe, I kind of quit working with the pyramidite and switched over to organizing my rock collection. Found a great seller on eBay, Jomus, and bought a few corundum specimens and some andalusite

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Visit me at www.glendonite.com

Grinding a New Crystal Head

I've decided to switch to making heads out of some of these larger chunks of concretized pyramidite I've got. I tried one free hand and it was pretty much a disaster as I've spent practically no time teaching myself how to sculpt faces in 3d. I need to go about it in a reductionist method where I get six views of the head I want to make, then transfer the measurements to the rock.

I think I'll start first with one of the Easter Island moai. I bought a die grinder on eBay with 1/8" & 1/4 collets and a bunch of bits. It was only $20!

This mega-pyramidite is excellent carving material, as beautiful as any pipestone. The only thing is that it does have a crystalline substructure and so can fracture off in chunky pieces if the carving isn't careful.

Impasse

First thing that happened once I got down to the crystal level was I dug into the surface of the crystal itself. Lacking really good illumination, and with the pitted surface totally covered in oil and debris, I couldn't tell the difference between limestone and glendonite, so ended up gouging some of the crystal. Then I discovered that the bond between the two was so strong, the limestone was not chipping off the crystal. And if I used the tip of the stylus to wear it away horizontally, the vibration damaged the surface of the glendonite. I had already damaged some of the crystal face as you can see by the white gouges in the image below. So I'm at an impasse and for the time being am shifting my attention to the sail sculpture.

Scribus Maximus

My son Jason came over and showed me how to fine tune the operation of my compressor and Paleo-Aro scribe. Now that thing just blasts through the limestone on my concretions! The specimen is getting oil on it, but that won't matter once the glendonite crystal is fully revealed. Oh, this is a large crab-leg flange type pyramidite crystal fragment, flat, about the size of my hand, with a limestone dome on both sides. One side has a cool erosional feature on it in the exact shape of a paw print! So I chose the other, non-descript side to reveal. I'm thinking 3 good sessions will get me down to crystal. Sure hope I can remove the final layer without damage to the crystal. Expecting it to be that virgin brown surface so rarely seen in my glendonite specimens. If this process turns out to be reasonable I have many more specimens to reveal this way. Plus I'd really like to go back to Porter and get some more crab concretions.

Polystone Tiki

Al's stonemover friends appreciated the crystals I sent, greatly he reports. They use them as part of their ceremonies during the replacement of the temple stones. I profess ignorance of the deeper uses those pyramidites may serve. Often have I provided unique artifacts to people as though my role was that of conduit; I usually appreciated those items but knew they were not to be mine, and attempted never to covet them again.

Yet I did, never losing my desire to recover a wooden knife and sheath I once carved out of old-growth cormwood. The handle of the knife formed the fierce visage of a raptor-bird, that just showed up as the knife designed itself. I gave it to my friend Banda and believe he probably took it with him to the Old World. (Would that I could hear his transcendant guitar again!)

The feeling comes that something is moving through me, in the stonemover's direction again. But what might be proper? I do have the blade-sail sculpture in the works but that's for a time yet to be.

While rummaging through a store of pre-owned artifacts, I came upon a nicely browned polystone tiki, an original made in 1961. It held the same heft and presence of the crystals. I saw it on a pedestal, back-to-back with a blade of pyramidite, carefully wrapped, packed, handed off, just before stories echo back, of stone tiki temples in steaming glades of greenery and mystery.

Pyramidite Patterns Manifesting

Finally reached the stage where I can now sort through my mass of pyramidites; and first thing immediately noticed was the predominance of flange types. Once I've got them all seperated out, I'll further sort those into subclasses of flange types.

I'm going to put together collections containing one complete set of all types I've identified. The specimens G. in NSW sent are of known types. Looking forward to Glen here in the states sending me some of his.

Sure would like to make more trades, but am immensely gratified that I've met several people all over the world who are as interested in glendonites as much as I am. If you are too, please send me an email about your experiences. Send me photos too!

Freezing and Scribing

Finally got a chance to have a scribe session on some concretioned specimens using my new PaleoAro fossil prep tool. It's an amazing tool and definitely worth the $350+ it cost, not including the huge compressor I needed to run it. Gotta keep the oil in it, that's for sure. Need to get an automatic oiler. Of course, I need to plumb my shop properly so I'm not dealing with stupid hose rolls all over the floor.

The scribe is pretty slow going and actually takes a lot of practice to use properly. Strangely enough, the more you push, the less effective it is. There's a sweet spot where the rock literally melts away from the tip, if you're doing it right. But even so, it takes about an hour to remove an area of concretionized-limestone about 8 cm square by maybe 2 mm. So patience is definitely required. It's gonna be a while before I get down to actual crystal and find out how well the scribe separates the rock from the glendonite. Hoping it will work well, since sometimes a good blow with the sledgehammer does a magnificent job. Click my airscribe below to visit the PaleoTools website.

I also tried my first soak/freeze test on a concretionized crystal. I soaked it for a week, then froze it for a week. Just now I took it out to the shop and hit it quite a bit with my rock hammer. If anything, it's harder now than it was originally. Plus the thing was incredibly cold, even through a leather glove my hand was starting to freeze-hurt. I wailed on that sucker and the hammer just rang off, not leaving even the littlest pressure flake on it. I hit that damn thing harder than hell!! When does that soak/freeze option actually work?

Mass Pyramidite

Talked to my friend Glen (not his real name) tonight, yesterday and the day before he found over 150 crystals! Most of them are complete and with good surface and terminations. I'd say he has the best collecting location in the world, at least of all known locations. He said some of them are so sharp he could have easily slashed his leg on them or punctured his boot. Glen has a collection of over 1,000 pyramidites, from 2 locations. I'm sincerely hoping he'll send me some photos soon.

Crystallized Rancor?

It's a bit of a disappointment being obsessed with a mineral form both obscure and visually unexciting to the vast majority of rockhounds and mineral experts. The few people I've contacted who understand glendonite are as excited about it as I am. But I have contacted many others who don't indicate the slightest interest in a mineral form which exhibits many anomalous characteristics, besides being directly significant to current investigations into the history of Earth's climate changes.

Strangely enough, it's the world-class mineral collectors and gem & rock show organizers who have shown the most cool, disinterested response to this amazing crystal. I'm mystified. Here's a mineral form of which there are probably less than 2,000 specimens in the possession of a handful of collectors, in the entire world. They're extremely difficult to obtain, at least based on my efforts so far which have included a number of different types of attempts at contacting those who might hold pieces available for trade.

This is something that most collectors just can't have in their collections, due to its rarity, and how difficult it is to find people who have some and would be willing to part with specimens. Yet there seems to be no desire on the part of anyone to have it. Is this truly a mystery or am I actually just stuck in a delusional mind-trip, thinking that since I'm so crazy about it, others should be too? There are billions of people on earth. Surely out of those billions there are at least a few thousand who access the Internet, think Glendonite is astounding, and deserving of much more attention from the mineralogical world than it gets right now.

I've contacted true experts in the field and told them about the website. The website clearly showcases glendonites I own; and states clearly I want to trade. Yet I've been contacted by a grand total of 2 collectors, and have had a mere 5 more respond to my inquiries of them. It's not that it hurts my feelings, but it does rile me up a bit. Can it be that my interest is so esoteric, so strangely unique, so obscure, that "experts" in rock collecting will never care about it?

I think I've got the website pretty well established now; most of the gallery images link to their sources, and the structure seems stable and easy to navigate. All I have to do now is fix up the Research page so it's more useful and interesting. Then it can just sit there in its cyber-spatial matrix, like a glendonite stuck in the mud, probably for eons, with nary a glance from those caught up in the bling of big shiny crystals worth lots of money. So it goes!

Mega-Glendonite

Today I dug through my many boxes of pyramidite, looking for examples of mega-crystals. Turns out I had tucked away several terminations in limestone which must have been amazingly long in their original form.

I've sent images to Dr. Krassmann at the Giant Crystal Project since there's the potential for these to have originally been in the same size class as the largest glendonites ever found.

Seems like I've got to find a whole one at some point; or pieces of it. I've got quite a few ends, and maybe 3 tantalizing central sections, several inches in diameter.

Place of Crystal Dreams

I dreamt again of pyramidite, as I've done so many thousands of othertimes. Under a sky of sailing clouds through cerulean blue, I walked a ridge where quartz and masses of garnet filled every gap and hole in the grass. Occasionally I stooped lower, knowing the pyramidite must be near. Then I saw the telltale brownish edges, running along a seam of quartz and greywacke. I took hold of the crystal and pried it loose, realizing it was part of a larger radiating structure. The
other arms were also loose and came up too with little effort. I had a bag with multiple compartments, into which I'd put the sets of crystal pieces for later reconstruction.

The air was clear and fresh; no one wandered near the buildings or the pond. I moved around the corner in remembrance of the grandpa pyramidite I'd found so easily the time before, and hunkered down on the shore to look more closely. The uniformity of the pebbles there was remarkable, as were the gently lapping waves, the sounds of waking birds, a morning breeze, so barely stirring, where crystals grow out of the earth...

Hunter River Crystals!

Recieved a nice box of glendonite from my friend Greg in NSW, Australia. I've posted a picture of them on the front page. It's truly bizarre to see examples of the same growth process, with some notable differences. For instance, twins are very rare in my collection, while they seem to be quite common in the Hunter River glendonites. Also, many of them have a coating of gypsum, which I have never encountered in my specimens. The gypsum flakes off easily, but the surface underneath is not pristine, as it is in my Pyramidite crystals.

I've sent a box of mine to Greg and I'm sure he'll be as amazed as I was, receiving glendonite crystals from the other side of the planet.

Sledge Stone on www.Mokichi.net

Found this on www.mokichi.net, translated in Google and came up with this poetic rendering. Thank you whomever you are!

玄翁sledgehammer is the same in the so-called KANADZUCHI kind.
この写真はあまり似ていないが、 This picture is not dissimilar,
明治時代の命名者が手にした標本がカナヅチ的であったらしい。 Meiji era of naming a hands-on specimen
is KANADZUCHI DEATTARASHII.
実際、産地のひとつである長野県上田市では In fact, one of the growing areas in Ueda, Nagano
Prefecture
古代人の石器だと思われていたくらいである。 Ancient Stone who seems to have been enough.

玄能石は鉱物界の七不思議の一つと言ってもいい、 Sledge stone is the world's Seven Wonders of
the mineral You can say,
奇妙な物件である。 Strange property.
何やらトゲトゲイガイガな突起が突き出しており、 何YARA TOGETOGEIGAIGA projections are sticking out,
でっかい金平糖のような雰囲気だ。 Big Konpeitou like atmosphere.
日本ではこれがフォッサマグナ以東の In Japan, this is the FOSSAMAGUNA以東
第三紀中新世の泥岩中からごろごろと出てくる。 Naka Osamu third epoch of mud from岩中GOROGORO
and come out.
調べてみると中身は微細な方解石だ。 Come to find out the contents of the fine calcite.
微細な、ということはつまりこの妙ちきりんな形は Fine, that means that this form is妙CHIKIRIN
方解石そのものの結晶形ではないことになる。 Calcite crystals form itself is not.
仮晶だ。 Provisional crystal.

ある鉱物の結晶の形だけが残り、 A mineral crystal form only remaining,
内部が他の鉱物に入れ替わっている場合、 Internal other minerals coming and going,
これを仮晶と呼ぶ。 This is called a false form.

ところが玄能石の場合、 But sledgehammer stone,
果たして元々何の鉱物の結晶だったのかがさっぱり判らない。 What's really original mineral crystals
was going判RANAI is refreshing.
長い間、さまざまな憶測が乱れ飛んでいた。 Long, a variety of speculation that乱RE飛N.
それが近年になって、 In recent years it has become,
イカ石Ikaite（CaCO 3 *6H 2 O）なる鉱物が Squid stone Ikaite (CaCO 3 * 6H 2 O)
into minerals
北極海の海底から発見されたのである。 Arctic seabed from the discovery.
低温の海水中で成長するこの炭酸カルシウムの鉱物こそ、 Cold water in the growth of the mineral
calcium carbonate is the
玄能石の元来の姿であるという一応の結論をみたのだった。 Sledge's original stone figure that prima
facie conclusion tried.

とはいえ、イカ石の仮晶だとすると Still, squid stone with a false form.
少々説明のつかない形の玄能石も存在しており、 A little unexplainable shaped stone sledge also exist,
まだまだ謎は完全に解けたとはいえないのであった。 Still a mystery is not completely solved and the.

写真はロシア産のもので、 Photos are produced in Russia,
２個の玄能石が砂岩に埋もれている。 Two sledgehammer sandstone rocks are buried.
分銅のような、ちょっと楽しい形の標本である。 Weight, as well as a little fun-shaped specimen.

Pyramidite on eBay

I've got one of my good crystals up for sale on eBay now. Let's see if anybody cares. Will potential buyers and mineral collectors realize how incredibly rare this crystal form is? They may never get another chance to own one of these! I'm in communication with a geologist in Denmark right now who says the special forms I've discovered violate some very basic laws of crystal formation. Will expound on this in a future blog entry. Add your comment!

Links Fixed

Okay, I removed the links which open websites within Glendonite.com, and am in the process of creating a special links page to bring together a summary of all the Glendonite information I can locate on the Internet. If you are aware of a source on the Web which I have not listed, please zap me an email - I'd really appreciate it! And that applies to any website you believe should be included on the Links page.

Crystal Cleaning

Today I got out my milk crate full of unwashed crystals from my last trip to Pyramidia. This is one of my favorite pastimes - going through a load of specimens, and cleaning up the most compelling of them for display, trades or whatever.

As you can see in the photo, even though I had already gone through the mass of material a couple times, there were still some well-formed dipyramids in there; some massive pieces (upper right), and a few large flange pieces. Flanges are the flattened plate-like sections of crystals that usually form near the center of complete crystals. I have some that are over 10 centimeters across, meaning the original crystal must have been at least a meter in length. They're just amazing to look at and contemplate what the original crystal must have been like. One day I hope to find a mega-pyramidite-crystal in its original form...

Glendonite.com

Now that I've got the website established, there are some very important changes I must make. First, the links I've set up to other information sources which open in a frame within my site, I must alter so they open in their own windows. I did that at first only to support my own research, but it's an inappropriate use of others' work. Especially now that rockhounds from other parts of the world are becoming aware of Glendonite.com. Also, I need to do a much more in-depth explication of the types of Glendonite I collect, which I have named Pyramidite. Actually, I named it that before I found out that it was a Calcite Pseudomorph after Ikaite; but I've decided to continue the use of the name to delineate the types of Glendonite I've found which seem unique to the American continent.

Stones of Somnolence

The meadow was full of noise when I arrived. Booming surf filled the valley and I could see wave froth tossed into the air where the forest broke to beach. I quickly set up camp and hurried to the edge of the bluff, but could go no further. The ocean was in more of a rage than I'd thought - whole trees bounced on the wavetops as the frenzied waters chewed the bank. Only a fool would descend within reach of such stormy waters, so I went back through the camp and down the trail; I wanted to view the beach from a point farther west where I knew the clay banks might be in reach.

Forcing my way through the tangled brush, I found a triple-trunked maple that had fallen into a horizontal position above the shore. I couldn't resist the urge to crawl out on it, about fifteen feet, to where the three trunks diverged, creating a snug place to tuck myself in. The crashing waves were almost deafening, mere feet below me, and the trees waved gently up and down in the wind. Yet I began to feel relaxed, lulled by the discordant sounds of nature in uproar...

I woke in the dimness, momentarily forgetting where I was and what was going on. Confusion reigned as I gripped the mossy trunks by my side and looked around. The raging waves had calmed somewhat but still came in strongly, crashing on the rocks below, then surging back with tremendous force.

It was now seriously dark and the tide seemed to be coming in; I must have slept for hours. Fortunately I hadn't sleep-walked while up in the trees; and they hadn't fallen farther into the sea while I was upon them, and the waves hadn't pulled me down...

Crawling back to land, I stood up and stretched my soreness out, then started back to camp. Night came on as I entered my empty, dark campsite. Good thing I'd set up my tent before going out, as I was exhausted from sleeping above a fearfully crashing ocean. I crawled into shelter, to dream of nothing but mahogany crystals and rock-chewing waves.

Caveman Coins

Some pyramidite crystals are found encased in concretions - hard shells of limestone that accrete in layers around the core object. I have never located a concretion that seemed to be in the process of formation, and in fact some geologists posit they do not actually form by rolling around in the mud; that instead, they result from a chemical interaction between the object within, and the mud surrounding it.

This theory is reasonable when considering a concretion containing a crab, for instance, since the organic material of the original crab body, as it transforms into a fossil, could interact with the minerals in the surrounding mud, hardening them into a shell around it. But in the case of pyramidite, there is no organic material to interact with the mud, so that cannot be the explanation for the formation of the concretion around the crystal.

I've found hundreds of concretions, and all of them were hard as any stone. I've never found one that was soft on the outside, as though it had recently accreted another layer of mud around it which would eventually turn into stone. I have also found them in clay banks, totally hardened, fixed in the soft clay. The clay surrounding them is easily removed with a screwdriver, and falls off the concretions very cleanly. How then do these things form?

One morning I was walking in Pyramidia when a round shape caught my eye - it had a cross-section of a piece of pyramidite in it, forming a disk with a trapezoidal symbol in the center. Since it was found at the foot of a clay bank, we named them Caveman Coins...

Pyramidite Discovery

The first glendonite crystal I found was small, only about 3 inches long, and partially covered in clay. But it was a rich red/brown, with an exciting texture smoothed by time and water. It was double-terminated. At first I thought is was an arrowhead; but quickly realized it was nothing of the sort, being too thick and pointed on both ends. Plus it was doubtful arrowheads would ever be found in that location due to the environmental conditions.

So I slipped it into my pocket for later examination, knowing I'd found something very interesting. How magically, incredibly interesting it would become I had no idea at that time. But later it would become quite clear.