Fieldtrip Report:
Fieldtrip Report:
Diamond
Hill Mine,
Antreville, S.C.
Documentary Report,
Smoky Amethyst Crystals,
October 21st-November 2005
More specimen pictures from members:
Nancy Seavers big smoky plate.
Here are a few more pieces I have cleaned from the boxes on the porch.
The large crystal measures 3.5"
This is a little specimen, I can't decide whether to take the iron coating off or not?.
This is not the smoky, but the yellow crystals that are coming from the same area.
The following pictures added 12-13-05:
I am still cleaning the specimens from the boxes on the porch, the following pieces were cleaned this past week:
Another huge cluster of double terminated smoky crystals, I looked at the piece and decided it must have come from one of the larger plates we had found, after spending some time with the larger plates, I found its mate, now one of the large plates will be even bigger when I reattach this cluster to it.
Another small specimen, two crystals surrounded by numerous perfect double terminated crystals, it actually could use another dip in the iron out, the crystal on the right is one of the darkest smokys I collected, both of the bigger crystals have a frosty coating on them and I could not see inside except when I held them up to a strong light.
I thought there might be phantoms inside the piece, so I took it to the Henderson Co. clubs workshop and cut a window in the backside of one of the crystals, and yes, there are nice phantoms inside.
Lee had sent me dozens of pictures from our most recent trip to the mine, it will be filed as a seperate report since we were not actually digging in the Chunky-Dave Pocket, we found some beautiful specimens in the walls surrounding the pit and in a few other places, I had to add this pic to this report, Steve Barr had brought along another of his huge smoky crystal plates that he had cleaned, another fantastic museum quality piece recovered by one of our MAGMA members:
I still can't get over the awesome size of the 2-3+ inch crystals that cover some of these pieces.
