The Drill

The Drill. Checking my recent road trip finds with my Geiger counter, handheld metal detector, and my two UV lamps. Just to see if anything else is going on besides the reasons I originally picked them up.

One piece under shortwave fluoresces a nice green. May have found some common opal. This was on my last stop, when I pulled off the highway on a whim to walk the desert floor. At first I thought it was an agate because one side displays a translucent quality along with a wavy banding. When I got home, though, with my tools, I remembered I had seen something like it.

That piece matches the color, luster and the fluorescence of Arizona opal I recently got in trade from rock and mineral dealer Rolf Luetcke. Although simply white, the rock comes alive under shortwave UV. Not the intensity or brightness of Rolf’s piece, that material is top-notch, but the exact same color under the lamp.

Update: Not opal. A steel nail doesn’t scratch it, but a nail scratches the opal Rolf supplied. The piece must be chalcedony or agate, or whatever you want to call cryptocrystalline quartz. Hmm. What are the odds that I would find something that looks exactly like something else and fluoresces just like it as well. At least I know a place to search for fluorescent agates. The agates I have don’t fluoresce, certainly nothing green.

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