Hey everybody, I'm here with Craig and Cody from Michigan Rockhounds
and I'm going to let Craig tell you where we are, because
he knows more than I do
we're at a spot called Thomsonite Hill
Thomsonite Hill is a very long hill in the Keweenaw
it stretches from roughly
the Copper Harbor area all the way to the Calumet area
and it has
what were previously identified as thomsonites
we know today that they probably aren't actually thomsonites
but they're very
interesting, beautiful minerals
here's an example
of what we find out here
and these
these are all lava rocks here, basalts from the midcontinent rift
and
what happened is that in the center of Lake Superior, because they're heavy
rocks, it sank, and it pushed these rocks up, and it creates
the
this line of rocks that come out
so these lava flows, rather than being horizontal, they're coming out at an
angle of like 30 to 40 degrees
and that's what created Thomsonite Hill, and the key
when you're looking for thomsonite is to find the right spot on the hill
where you can get stuff like this
and that's what we're doing today, and that about all we'll tell you about
the location
good luck
(Rob) Cody just picked up a few examples just laying around on the ground
you can kind of see what this stuff looks like
you see that kind of spray pattern coming out from the top down on that one?
(Craig) here's a real nice one
you can actually see
it grew from two different sides and grew into each other there
(Cody) alright, so safety first, you always want goggles, don't get
those tiny little glasses, because what happens with the glasses is that shards
will reflect off your face and into here and sometimes ricochet in, I felt it
several times
but these are like demolition goggles, and this is definitely what you want for
this kind of thing
(Craig) they're also good if you ski into location, right?
[laughter]
(Cody) but if you're doing anything like this with a pickaxe
ideally you want to keep the pickaxe like this
up, let the pickaxe head do the work
and just like that
let's see what we got through here
and nothing
got a few pieces right there that are really
eh, we can find way better than that
(Rob) oh look at that, bare hands (Cody) yeah
(Rob) you're tough
(Cody) check the other piece out
doubt there's anything there
not really much there
but, that's what it's all about, finding stuff
you can see those spray patterns there, barely just vague spray patterns
so we're looking for the good stuff, the actual pronounced spray patterns that
we looked at earlier
(Rob) alright, so Cody just found a greenstone, right there
you can see that
and
of course thomsonites all the way around here
if these are actually thomsonites
but yeah you can see the greenstone, oftentimes they're hollow like that
so it doesn't look like much until you get it out of there and polish it up
(Craig) I'll point out for your viewers that
people may be accustomed to that
that nice turtle shell texture on that, what you're seeing is a side view
a broken one
and
those little radiating crystals are what create that nice bubbly turtle shell
texture that you're used to seeing
alright, so we got some of this thomsonite that's probably not really thomsonite
we
maybe in the next year or two we'll get it checked and find out for sure what it is
but you see it all growing from the outsides of this amygdule here, this bubble
in the lava
but what's really interesting about this is that it didn't finish filling in
and so you can see all these little fibrous hair-like structures growing inward
and you can see that that's the way that they grow, they grow
by extending those little fibers into the center of the hole
and then filling in the space in between
and
this one, the conditions just went wrong at some point
and it couldn't finish the job filling in
(Rob) okay, Will just joined us, so he's also picking around in the rocks, and Craig
(Craig) yeah, so one man's trash is another man's treasure, this was just laying on
it's side, I flipped it over
and take a look at the bold colors on this
this is one of our, another one of our thomsonites that aren't a real thomsonite
but we're calling it thomsonite
(Rob) well it's on Thomsonite Hill, so it's only fair
(Craig) yeah, but look at that color
(Rob) that's gorgeous
(Craig) yeah almost, almost blood red on that
beautiful
(Rob) alright Will, what'd you find?
(Will) so I found this really interesting specimen here
I don't know what it is, our geologist is unsure as well
I have one word to describe it, and that is shiny
I like how it looks like it's got sprays coming out from the center of all
of a bunch of those little
pieces there
so, me hit rock hard, it break
look shiny, pick up, love it
(Craig) as a geologist I can point out a few features about it, number one
it's not happening inside those amygdules, those holes
this is filling in a crack
so these aren't 3-dimensional, they're radiating out almost on a 2D plane there
(Will) very thin
(Craig) yeah, it's very very thin material there
almost all white with just a little bit of pink in it
it is probably a zeolite of some kind, zeolites are a
an enormous class of minerals, and sometimes when we call things zeolites
it's because we don't know, it's one of like maybe 40 possibilities
(Rob) and what's the other thing you found?
(Will) a piece of copper
just broke off in my hand though
a little piece of it sticking up out of the rock
(Rob) right here
(Rob) yup, we did see it sticking right out of there
(Craig) well you see here, this is all oxidized copper right here, all that green
(Rob) okay
(Craig) that's copper right there (Cody) there might be more, I have my
(Cody) metal detector too
(Rob) so I'm not planning to take very much of this home
but I like this one, it's a whole nodule sticking out of there, so
I'm going to take it home and cut
cut it out, and then grind down and see what I can do with it
okay, so I'm going to try to remove that little nodule out of this, and that's the
only one I can see in here
although it might be worth breaking this up a little bit more and seeing if
there's any more hiding in there
I have one other one that I brought home that's already out of the rock, so
that's what I'm looking for, something like that
(saw grinding)
first thing I need to do is remove this matrix from this little piece of thomsonite
I could've cut more on the saw, but I thought it was probably a little bit safer
to do it over here, so I'm going to
I'll use one of these two wheels, I'm not sure which one, we'll see how it goes
(wheel grinding)
there it is
you can almost see it
and I got to say, I'm not super impressed
but it might just be because my eyes aren't good enough to see the tiny guy
not sure if I got a consistent shine all the way around, it is shiny, but
I don't know if I missed any spots, it's really hard to hang on to that little thing
so the other one I have
is bigger
I know this one got smaller as I worked on it, but this one was smaller to start with
so
we'll see how the other one looks, doing that one now
(wheel grinding)
well I wasn't super impressed with the last one, but this one's pretty cool
there's still a little bit of that green on there, i went back and tried to take
it off several times, and I was just afraid I was going to grind through
too much of the rock, so I ended up leaving it a little bit
and there's a little speck of something on that side
but check out the chatoyancy here
on the top, hope I can get this to focus
can you see the
the color changing up there?
it's really pretty neat
sorry about my gross-looking fingers, there we go
can you see that?
right along in here
that's really cool
so there you go
thomsonite from Thomsonite Hill
(Cody) so this is a piece of thomsonite or zeolite that's in here that
this nodule here, you can see I'm trying to get this nodule out, oh
(Rob) wow (Cody) came out really clean
(Cody) yeah, so this is exactly like how agates form
as these amygdules, and
I have a few of these at home where you can just literally pop them out of the
sockets
just like that
(Rob) yeah, I was afraid it wouldn't come out very easily, I'm going to have to be
careful with mine, but that came out super nice
well this is some of Cody's stash
(Cody) see all that beautiful red, and how this one broke along here, this
is so smooth
(Rob) yeah, this is so neat
(Cody) some of them I broke right out of the amygdules, right here
and here and here
and this one here is probably the most interesting
amygdule of the bunch, it doesn't look that interestinfg from this side
but look at that
it's beautiful
(Rob) really cool stuff
(Cody) and there's one in here, you can see this one's got a bit of a
wormy amygdule rolling through there
(Rob) yup
nice stuff
hey everyone, if you want to see more videos from the Keweenaw Peninsula, I'll have a
couple linked here, so click on one of those and I'll see you next time
-adios -later