Tungsten Mine for Fluorescent Minerals / Product Review
Apr 15, 2017 14:36:35 GMT -5
quartz and MrMike like this
Post by paulshiroma on Apr 15, 2017 14:36:35 GMT -5
A few weekends ago, I had occasion to be up in the Adelanto CA area and decided to leave well ahead of my appointment and do some rockhounding.
I had run across an article on the website Wheretofindrocks.com where they had gone to an abandoned tungsten mine to pick up some florescent minerals. The mine is called The Princess Pat mine or the Just Associates Tungsten Mine and appeared to be easy to access. The claim was abandoned many years ago and about all that remains of the mining operation is a lot of prospecting cuts, some adits, and a lot of overburden piles. In other words, a giant playground for rockhounds! The pics they took looked great and their report was well detailed. The added bonus was that it was 20 minutes south of where I was going anyway so I figured on grabbing some materials, guessing which might fluoresce, before meeting up with my friends. If nothing panned out, I figured I could always make the trip again as it’s only about 90 minutes from Costa Mesa.
I packed the night before and made sure I had studied Google Maps and got a good idea of what the road conditions were like. I was a bit concerned when I left the next morning at 5:30 AM as it had rained all night in Costa Mesa and the weather stated that the high desert would get rain that morning as well. Fortunately, the rain tapered off the further north I went, eventually just becoming windy and cloudy in the Cajon Pass. It was cold in the pass – 45 degrees at the summit – and the storm had dumped a small amount of snow on the higher summits.
In Lancaster, I grabbed 395 north and cut through Adelanto. I missed the initial turn off as The Princess Pat mine road is on the west side of 395 and there is no center turn out lane. I had to continue a bit farther north, pull off, and then do a u-turn when traffic permitted. Heading west from 395, you’ll have a nicely graded, wide (two lanes), dirt road that you’ll take west for about five miles.
The first 2.5 miles is easy to traverse. Stay on this road and continue west. The Shadow Mountains are seen in the distance on the left side of the photo. That area is your ultimate destination.
There are a lot of privately owned parcels here and one active mine by Brubaker-Mann in the Shadow Mountains so don’t stray south just yet. At about the 2.5 mile marker, the road narrows to a single lane and is less maintained. There were some washouts but nothing serious. In this photos the road had narrowed and gets relatively rough, compared to your start. This is about 4 miles or so in. You can use the Mountain View Road as well but since this was my first time here, I stayed on the Princess Pat Mine road per the directions from the other club's outing. The road heads south and will take you to the (more or less) center of the old mining area.
The last mile or so is rough desert road. Lots of debris and the washouts I had to occasionally traverse diagonally. Someone had thoughtfully filled one of the larger washouts with rocks and two by fours to try and keep it passable. The last 150-200 yards or so are rough. Drive slowly. Note that you can access this location in a standard passenger car if you drive slowly and carefully.
This is the last bit of road before I parked. It'll give you an idea of the road conditions. Towards the center of the photo, you'll note the road takes a dip. This is one of the wash outs along the way. Nothing major but be aware. This one was sandy at the bottom. I stopped at a few places along the way, opened the door, and grabbed materials as I drove. I think an old member, GR, used to call is “road hounding”.
I parked here (red circle). The chevron’s indicate prospecting cuts and piles of materials to sift through. Where I parked had a pile of rock so I just went through that pile as well as along the road. I only had about 45 minutes to collect so I had to move fast.
Here’s the view from where I parked. It was about 7:00 AM when I arrived and the sun was out. Beautiful day and beautiful area. In the next photo, you can see the road forks left and right. You can take these to much larger tailing piles (the ones shown in the above map with the red chevrons).
This photos looks back east to 395.
I collected about three buckets of materials. I had looked at the other groups photos before coming out so I sort of had an idea of what they were looking for when viewed under normal light. My shortwave UV light wouldn’t arrive until a few days later so I sort of had to guess. Anyway, I took what looked promising. Most of it is uninspiring non-descript white-ish rock. Some seam quartz, calcite, small bits of scheelite (I think). Some of the material is heavier than expected – I guess that’s the tungsten – although I wouldn’t know what tungsten ore looks like unless someone pointed it out to me.
After getting home later that afternoon, I washed the materials off. Here’s a small sample. Pretty uninspiring stuff…. Three buckets worth of uninspiring stuff… I had to wait for the Post Office to deliver my UV lamp so a few representative pieces sat in the kitchen for a few days.
Some hope that this was the right material. This piece fluoresced ever so slightly under my reef tank’s lamps. They have longer wave UV (420nm) bulbs for the corals.
Eureka! My lamp finally arrived. This is a small field model that UVTools.com had on sale. It arrived well packaged and comes with two bulbs (used one at a time): one short wave and one long wave. The short wave is installed. The long wave is in the pvc pipe for shipping. They also provide lexan eye glasses to protect your eyes from the UV radiation and a sample set of minerals that will glow under UV light. The unit takes three D sized batteries and also has a regular LED on one end so it can be used as a flashlight when out in the field. Get new batteries. I tried to use some I had laying around and it wouldn’t power up. Once I got fresh ones, it started fine. This particular model has a high output ballast and bulb and is good to 11 watts. I think, all in with shipping, it was about $75. The next one up was a “portable” field lamp that started at $250 and required a separate battery pack (additional $250). I couldn’t afford that and, frankly, didn’t want to lug it around, either. This one works just fine.
After reading through this instructions, and getting the batteries inserted, the rocks went from “uninspiring, non-descript white-ish” to “holy smokes!” It was stunning. Here’s the pictures of the rocks shown above under short wave UV:
If you get this field lamp, they’ll also include some lexan eye glasses to help filter out the UV. You do feel it on your skin when holding the rocks and even though you’re not looking directly at the light source, the reflected radiation does make your eyes hurt. Word to the wise: set the rock down … don’t hold it when holding the UV lamp over the rock. You'll feel a nice burning sensation on your skin otherwise.
I’ll add more photos as just about all of the rocks I brought back fluoresce to some degree. Thanks and I hope you enjoyed the trip report and product report. I'm definitely going back as I want to explore the other piles to the east of where I parked. They were considerably larger and looked much more promising.
I had run across an article on the website Wheretofindrocks.com where they had gone to an abandoned tungsten mine to pick up some florescent minerals. The mine is called The Princess Pat mine or the Just Associates Tungsten Mine and appeared to be easy to access. The claim was abandoned many years ago and about all that remains of the mining operation is a lot of prospecting cuts, some adits, and a lot of overburden piles. In other words, a giant playground for rockhounds! The pics they took looked great and their report was well detailed. The added bonus was that it was 20 minutes south of where I was going anyway so I figured on grabbing some materials, guessing which might fluoresce, before meeting up with my friends. If nothing panned out, I figured I could always make the trip again as it’s only about 90 minutes from Costa Mesa.
I packed the night before and made sure I had studied Google Maps and got a good idea of what the road conditions were like. I was a bit concerned when I left the next morning at 5:30 AM as it had rained all night in Costa Mesa and the weather stated that the high desert would get rain that morning as well. Fortunately, the rain tapered off the further north I went, eventually just becoming windy and cloudy in the Cajon Pass. It was cold in the pass – 45 degrees at the summit – and the storm had dumped a small amount of snow on the higher summits.
In Lancaster, I grabbed 395 north and cut through Adelanto. I missed the initial turn off as The Princess Pat mine road is on the west side of 395 and there is no center turn out lane. I had to continue a bit farther north, pull off, and then do a u-turn when traffic permitted. Heading west from 395, you’ll have a nicely graded, wide (two lanes), dirt road that you’ll take west for about five miles.
The first 2.5 miles is easy to traverse. Stay on this road and continue west. The Shadow Mountains are seen in the distance on the left side of the photo. That area is your ultimate destination.
There are a lot of privately owned parcels here and one active mine by Brubaker-Mann in the Shadow Mountains so don’t stray south just yet. At about the 2.5 mile marker, the road narrows to a single lane and is less maintained. There were some washouts but nothing serious. In this photos the road had narrowed and gets relatively rough, compared to your start. This is about 4 miles or so in. You can use the Mountain View Road as well but since this was my first time here, I stayed on the Princess Pat Mine road per the directions from the other club's outing. The road heads south and will take you to the (more or less) center of the old mining area.
The last mile or so is rough desert road. Lots of debris and the washouts I had to occasionally traverse diagonally. Someone had thoughtfully filled one of the larger washouts with rocks and two by fours to try and keep it passable. The last 150-200 yards or so are rough. Drive slowly. Note that you can access this location in a standard passenger car if you drive slowly and carefully.
This is the last bit of road before I parked. It'll give you an idea of the road conditions. Towards the center of the photo, you'll note the road takes a dip. This is one of the wash outs along the way. Nothing major but be aware. This one was sandy at the bottom. I stopped at a few places along the way, opened the door, and grabbed materials as I drove. I think an old member, GR, used to call is “road hounding”.
I parked here (red circle). The chevron’s indicate prospecting cuts and piles of materials to sift through. Where I parked had a pile of rock so I just went through that pile as well as along the road. I only had about 45 minutes to collect so I had to move fast.
Here’s the view from where I parked. It was about 7:00 AM when I arrived and the sun was out. Beautiful day and beautiful area. In the next photo, you can see the road forks left and right. You can take these to much larger tailing piles (the ones shown in the above map with the red chevrons).
This photos looks back east to 395.
I collected about three buckets of materials. I had looked at the other groups photos before coming out so I sort of had an idea of what they were looking for when viewed under normal light. My shortwave UV light wouldn’t arrive until a few days later so I sort of had to guess. Anyway, I took what looked promising. Most of it is uninspiring non-descript white-ish rock. Some seam quartz, calcite, small bits of scheelite (I think). Some of the material is heavier than expected – I guess that’s the tungsten – although I wouldn’t know what tungsten ore looks like unless someone pointed it out to me.
After getting home later that afternoon, I washed the materials off. Here’s a small sample. Pretty uninspiring stuff…. Three buckets worth of uninspiring stuff… I had to wait for the Post Office to deliver my UV lamp so a few representative pieces sat in the kitchen for a few days.
Some hope that this was the right material. This piece fluoresced ever so slightly under my reef tank’s lamps. They have longer wave UV (420nm) bulbs for the corals.
Eureka! My lamp finally arrived. This is a small field model that UVTools.com had on sale. It arrived well packaged and comes with two bulbs (used one at a time): one short wave and one long wave. The short wave is installed. The long wave is in the pvc pipe for shipping. They also provide lexan eye glasses to protect your eyes from the UV radiation and a sample set of minerals that will glow under UV light. The unit takes three D sized batteries and also has a regular LED on one end so it can be used as a flashlight when out in the field. Get new batteries. I tried to use some I had laying around and it wouldn’t power up. Once I got fresh ones, it started fine. This particular model has a high output ballast and bulb and is good to 11 watts. I think, all in with shipping, it was about $75. The next one up was a “portable” field lamp that started at $250 and required a separate battery pack (additional $250). I couldn’t afford that and, frankly, didn’t want to lug it around, either. This one works just fine.
After reading through this instructions, and getting the batteries inserted, the rocks went from “uninspiring, non-descript white-ish” to “holy smokes!” It was stunning. Here’s the pictures of the rocks shown above under short wave UV:
If you get this field lamp, they’ll also include some lexan eye glasses to help filter out the UV. You do feel it on your skin when holding the rocks and even though you’re not looking directly at the light source, the reflected radiation does make your eyes hurt. Word to the wise: set the rock down … don’t hold it when holding the UV lamp over the rock. You'll feel a nice burning sensation on your skin otherwise.
I’ll add more photos as just about all of the rocks I brought back fluoresce to some degree. Thanks and I hope you enjoyed the trip report and product report. I'm definitely going back as I want to explore the other piles to the east of where I parked. They were considerably larger and looked much more promising.