Chrome Agate????

[Redrummd]

Here is a stone I have never seen before and even the Jade dealer I got it from had never seen it before. Do any of you recognize the stone and know where it comes from???

I really would like to find and buy some more of this stone....

The Jade dealer had this stone in his safe as part of his personal collection before selling it to me for use on my artwork.

The stone is non-magnetic so the metal in the agate is almost surely chrome, based on the color splashes in the agate.

[xtldggr]

Hello redrummd,

Beautiful material you have there and some fine craftsmanship to boot.!!

In my humble opinion the material you have there is not any type of Agate. The material appears to be igneous in nature with subhedral to anhedral crystals of the green material present. There also appears to be a significant amount of what appears to be pyrite or some other metal present.

Although the person who sold this to you may have referred to this material as agate, as is often the case in lapidary circles it is improperly named. He may wish to call this material chrome agate, and he can certainly do this as a means to market the material, but if examined and evaluated in adherence to proper petrological analysis, my opinion is that it would not be an an agate.

Thanks for sharing the photos,

John-xtldggr-Makohon

[arappaho]

Cool material and excellent job as usual, Red.

It makes me wonder. I have this Chromite ore I've collected from
around here. I've tried slabbing some to see if I could get some
slabs with the emerald green spots to come out in them, but that
has proven as difficult as getting emeralds to come out in slabs
of the material from the Crabtree Emerald Mine! I need to work on
both more, but that's another story.
Anyway, here are a couple of pics of the Chromite Ore. The main
thing I would like you to notice are the emerald green splotches. A
local geologist told me that it was crystalized Chromite. There are
three pieces of the ore in these pics. The top piece is about the size
of a football, and the second pic is what I call a close-up.





Your material seems to be a higher grade, but when cabbed, the
host rock area looks very similar. My pieces are fairly soft, maybe a
5 or 6, but there's a real mixture of minerals in there. Lots of mica,
actinolite, kyanite, garnet, and occasionally, some small rubies.
I can't tell from your pics, and your agate reference, but your
material may have much more silica than this stuff. If the silver
areas are pyrite, you would definitely be able to smell the sulpher
while grinding.

Just thought I'd throw this out there for you to think about.
Thanks for the pics,
Joe

[Dicky the Rockhunter]

;D both of you have done a fantastic job cutting polishing and finding . I am seriously jealous.

Thanks for showing us.

Dick

[Redrummd]

All, I cut stone nearly every day and it is definitely agate and the metal in it is not hemitite or pyrite. (It is the 700th stone knife I have done.) It is non-magnetic. The stone is mostly clear agate with some white mottling that is a near fortification as seen in the first two photos. It is VERY translucent when backlit.

The stone was about the size of a small cantelope and I got about 12 decent size slabs from the piece.

Joe, Your photos look fairly close to what the stone I have looks like but the fracture on mine looks more like a porcelain agate or porcelain jasper break.

[arappaho]

Well, Redrummd, you've definitely got my curiosity peaked!
I have never seen anything like it before, but the more I look at it,
the more I like it.
I also like Hydros' guess of a Williamsite gem serpentine with
dissipated chromite. That would be somewhat translucent, but
probably not hard enough. I'm curious what you would say the
hardness is?
Have you looked at Kosmochlor , a chromite jadeite, as a possibility?
The second pic on this page from Mindat looks alot like it.
www.mindat.org/gallery.php?min=2258

I'll have to surf the agates next.
Joe

[Redrummd]

arappaho, No it is not translucent in the way a jade or serpentine is. The "base" in which the metal, chrome green floaters and in which the white plumes float is a CLEAR and HARD agate. The agate is as hard as Maury Mt Moss, Cathedral Agate, and Graveyard Point agates but a bit easier to cut than Brazilian or Condor agates. It is also harder than agatized dino or agatized petrified woods.

[4cornersrocks]

Dioptase, a copper silicate? very nice btw...