Great South Gems & Minerals

• Herkimer Diamond - Quartz Crystal •
(New York)

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• Herkimer Diamond - Quartz Crystal •
(New York)

Chalcedony - Agate - Onyx - Jasper - Aventurine - Tiger's Eye - Rock crystal - Amethyst - Citrine - Prasiolite - Rose Quartz - Milk Quartz - Smoky Quartz - Morion - Carnelian - Chert - Flint

These specimens range from about 1/4" to about 1/2".

Silicon dioxide. Hardness 7. Herkimer diamonds aren't diamonds. They are quartz formations which, because of their brilliance and diamond shape they've been given that name.

HERKIMER DIAMOND is a popular term for a variety of double terminated quartz crystals first discovered in exposed outcrops of dolomite at Little Falls in Herkimer County, New York. The popularity of mining for double-terminated quartz in the Herkimer County outcroppings is what lead to the name HERKIMER DIAMONDS.

These quartz crystals, which formed extremely slowly in small pockets or vugs of dolomite, have 18 facets and two terminations. Scientist tell us that the formation process of these unusual and beautiful crystals took place during the Cambrian period... 500,000,000 (million) years ago.

The rock a Herkimer Diamond is found in is dolomite. It was formed when the limestone and calcite bedrock, then beneath the sea, felt the addition of magnesium. Pockets or vugs formed in the dolomite and Herkimer diamonds grew, or formed, in these vugs.

Herkimer diamonds have been used for many years by those that follow the metiphysical teachings of healing qualities of stones. Among those metiphysical teachings is the Herkimer diamonds ability to raise human energy levels.

Quartz is the second most common mineral in the earth's crust. Quartz is a silicon dioxide. If you were to take the metal silicon, plus oxygen, plus a little time and pressure - you'd get a quartz crystals. Quartz is 7 on the Mohs hardness scale, harder than a steel knife blade.

Quartz belongs to the rhombohedral crystal system. Quartz crystals are a six-sided prism terminating with a six -sided pyramid at one end. In nature, quartz crystals are often twinned, distorted, or so inter grown with adjacent crystals of quartz or of other minerals as to only show part of a individual crystals shape, these groupings of the quartz points are called crystal clusters. Regardless of the shape or size of a quartz crystal, it always has six sides. It's not uncommon for the quartz crystals to have more than one stage or "growth" or formation. In quartz crystals where there has been two or more stages of formation unusual crystals are produced. There is the crystal that forms to a certain stage and then later, silicon dioxide forms a coating on the outside of the original crystal. These specimens are called spirit quartz. Then there is the quartz crystal where a crystal has formed and then a second stage of growth/formation causes the silicon dioxide to form at the top of the crystal, extending the length of the overall crystal. These are called scepter quartz crystals. This type formation is some times called phantom quartz crystal, where you can actually see what looks like smaller crystal inside a larger quartz crystal. Neat, huh! Then there are those quartz crystals that have inclusions in them. This occurs during the formation stage. The most common type of inclusions are water bubbles, called anhydrous, and the quartz crystals with rutile inside that looks like hairs that got caught in the formation stage.

Quartz crystals form in hydrothermal veins and pegmatites. Well formed quartz crystals may reach several feet in length and weigh literally hundreds of pounds. The Ouachita Mountains in western Arkansas is often referred to as the Quartz Crystal Capitol of the world. Beautiful super clear quartz crystals have been mined in the Ouachita Mountains for industrial and commercial use for many years. Mt. Ida, a small town in Arkansas, supplied clear quartz crystals to the US Military be used in electronic equipment, such as tanks, back during the second world war. These super-clear quartz crystals are used today as "seed quartz" by laboratories in producing quartz wafers used in all types electronics including watches and the computer industry.

Quartz, in all its varieties has a conchoidal type fracture, or a cone shape type fracture. Early man took note of this fact thousands of years ago and learned to shape quartz type rocks in many different shapes. Early man made stone knives, spear points, arrowheads, scraper stones, drill stones, and a host of other items. Early man found that with the use on quartz stones, they could shape the stones, through flaking the stones, and could gather their food, build their lodges with animal skins, make scrapers to clean animal skins to be used as clothing and many other uses. It's a fact that the human race advanced as rapidly as it did through man learning to use stones, altered into many different shapes for tools and weapons.

Quartz goes by many names: Chalcedony, Agate, Onyx, Jasper, Aventurine, Tiger's Eye, Rock crystal, Amethyst, Citrine, Prasiolite, Rose Quartz, Milk Quartz, Smoky Quartz, Morion, Carnelian, Chert, Flint.

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