These next pieces came from a fissure Scott and I worked on into the wee hours of the morning.
A lot of the fissures around here have been what we call "baked", but the pocket clay in this fissure was like kiln dried.
It was as hard as fired ceramics. For the first hour or so we took turns trying our "magic" methods to extract the crystals
without breaking them. Just when we thought we had it free, we'd hear this spine-staightening snap.
A terrible sick sound to hear after all that time and work pickin' away at it.
But like I say, after an hour or so, it got to be kindof comical and we had to realize that the quartz was going to break before the fired pocket clay every time.
A lot of this quartz was clear facet grade smoky, so we made good facet and cab material as we tried to concentrate on working around the larger crystals.
We had the larger crystal in the first pics completely exposed except for about an inch of the tip.
I was sure it was free.
As I lifted the base to slide it out I heard this sickly little "snap", and I knew the tip was gone.
This quartz has had a tough life. Often, the bigger it gets, the uglier it is. I included a couple close-ups of the inclusions.
Treasures you'd have to dig yourself to love.
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