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Dendritic Doodles (Read 3291 times)

JoeM God Member Offline I Love YaBB 2.5 AE! Posts: 4204 Location: Wake County, NC Joined: Sep 30^th, 2010 Gender:	Dendritic Doodles Jan 24^th, 2019 at 10:42pm	Print Post
	This is a really wonderful soft creamy white talc with fantastic black dendrites from Montana that you don't see all the time. Infact it's always described as "rare", so when I spied a bucket full of the stuff at the yardsale of an old rockhound recently I was happily surprised. I bought some of the material 20 years ago just for the "collection" since it was reputedly so "rare", and I still have a piece or two of that purchase. I remember that I had paid about $3.00 a lb for it 20 years ago, and that was a "bargain" price at that time. So I figured it had only gone up in price since then and offered him $2.00 a lb for it. He was happy with the $2.00 a lb but wanted a little something for the bucket. I wasn't expecting to come across any of this stuff so when I got home I did some surfing to check my purchase and found pretty much the same story as 20 years ago. It's still rare but several people have it for sale retail at about 5 a lb and a "bargain" is still $3.00 per lb. It still only is found at one site in northern Montana, but there may be several sites? Anyway, it's a luscious material and I had to "doodle" with the dendrites on a few pieces. Way too many pictures, but here we go. Dendritic Doodle #1.

	DSCN0175_002.JPG ( 193 KB \| 85 Downloads ) DSCN0138_001.JPG ( 144 KB \| 93 Downloads ) DSCN0159_001.JPG ( 137 KB \| 86 Downloads ) DSCN0147.JPG ( 178 KB \| 82 Downloads ) DSCN0154_001.JPG ( 198 KB \| 79 Downloads )
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JoeM God Member Offline I Love YaBB 2.5 AE! Posts: 4204 Location: Wake County, NC Joined: Sep 30^th, 2010 Gender:	Re: Dendritic Doodles Reply #1 - Jan 24^th, 2019 at 10:45pm	Print Post
	Dendritic Doodle #2 Lots of pics, but a pretty little piece.

	DSCN0211_001.JPG ( 187 KB \| 90 Downloads ) DSCN0215.JPG ( 270 KB \| 88 Downloads ) DSCN0188.JPG ( 164 KB \| 84 Downloads ) DSCN0192.JPG ( 157 KB \| 88 Downloads ) DSCN0200_001.JPG ( 187 KB \| 95 Downloads ) DSCN0197.JPG ( 155 KB \| 92 Downloads ) DSCN0208.JPG ( 191 KB \| 86 Downloads )
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JoeM God Member Offline I Love YaBB 2.5 AE! Posts: 4204 Location: Wake County, NC Joined: Sep 30^th, 2010 Gender:	Re: Dendritic Doodles Reply #2 - Jan 24^th, 2019 at 10:48pm	Print Post
	Dendritic Doodle #3 Fun piece!

	DSCN0222.JPG ( 162 KB \| 85 Downloads ) DSCN0219.JPG ( 165 KB \| 85 Downloads ) DSCN0245_001.JPG ( 179 KB \| 78 Downloads ) DSCN0257_001.JPG ( 186 KB \| 92 Downloads )
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Laurie Adams Junior Member Offline RockHoundLounger Posts: 95 Location: Denton, NC Joined: Apr 25^th, 2018 Gender:	Re: Dendritic Doodles Reply #3 - Jan 25^th, 2019 at 7:38am	Print Post
	I think the white material may be Howlite, very uncommon if not rare.


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Rebecca God Member Offline I Love YaBB 2.5 AE! Posts: 653 Joined: Nov 11^th, 2010 Gender:	Re: Dendritic Doodles Reply #4 - Jan 25^th, 2019 at 11:05am	Print Post
	Really striking material. I like the doodles but jewelry is portable/wearable art so some cabs would be beautiful! Sources say howlite is a 3 on the mosh so is it difficult to polish? It reminds me of the white dendritic stuff from JXR but that was not workable material. Thanks for sharing!


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JoeM God Member Offline I Love YaBB 2.5 AE! Posts: 4204 Location: Wake County, NC Joined: Sep 30^th, 2010 Gender:	Re: Dendritic Doodles Reply #5 - Jan 25^th, 2019 at 3:53pm	Print Post
	Yes, Laurie and Rebecca, it does look a lot like Howlite, but this is definitely a very soft talc. You can scratch it easily with your fingernail. Maybe 1 or 2 on Mohs. Forgot to mention, but I have put a coat of regular old paste wax on these to help them from getting scratched and it makes the black color and contrast pop more. Kind of like getting a slab of jasper wet to bring out the colors. You hardly notice the wax in person. I have not tried a wet diamond polish on the material yet and have not tried a cabochon yet, but Agreed, Rebecca, the possibilities are there! You could do about whatever you want with this material. It is solid and very fracture free and soft enough to work with wood tools and sandpaper. I have never seen any large pieces, over 10 inches, of the rough. Another noticeable difference between this material and Howlite are the black lines. In Howlite the black is more an erratic "veining" of lines and not too much of what I would call dendrites, where this material is, obviously, very dendritic. I do not know details about the source in Montana or the availability. I know it has always been advertised as "rare" and that it hasn't changed much in the last 20 years. We'll have to get dave64 out there in Washington to work on tracking this stuff down. BTW, dave, I think if you were to get a piece of this in your hands and work it a little bit, it would be Love at first bite!


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daves64 Senior Member Offline Rockaholic Posts: 456 Location: Ellensburg WA Joined: Jun 27^th, 2018 Gender:	Re: Dendritic Doodles Reply #6 - Jan 25^th, 2019 at 4:37pm	Print Post
	JoeM wrote on Jan 25^th, 2019 at 3:53pm: We'll have to get dave64 out there in Washington to work on tracking this stuff down. BTW, dave, I think if you were to get a piece of this in your hands and work it a little bit, it would be Love at first bite! How's this? "In the Cyprus Mine, Ennis, Madison County, Montana, white Talc is found with black dendritic manganese oxide growths included in the Talc." Also .. Yellowstone Mine (Cameron; Johnny Gulch Talc; Montana Talc), Gravelly Range, Madison Co., Montana, USA And looking at the pics, I think it would be fun trying to work it by hand.


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JoeM God Member Offline I Love YaBB 2.5 AE! Posts: 4204 Location: Wake County, NC Joined: Sep 30^th, 2010 Gender:	Re: Dendritic Doodles Reply #7 - Jan 25^th, 2019 at 6:21pm	Print Post
	That's the stuff, dave! Pack your bags and say Hey to folks in Madison County for us! Field Trip!


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daves64 Senior Member Offline Rockaholic Posts: 456 Location: Ellensburg WA Joined: Jun 27^th, 2018 Gender:	Re: Dendritic Doodles Reply #8 - Jan 25^th, 2019 at 9:28pm	Print Post
	So you're footing the bill for the air fare, hotel stay & food, right Joe?


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JoeM God Member Offline I Love YaBB 2.5 AE! Posts: 4204 Location: Wake County, NC Joined: Sep 30^th, 2010 Gender:	Re: Dendritic Doodles Reply #9 - Jan 26^th, 2019 at 10:19am	Print Post
	HA! That's why the stuff is so rare! The only "source" for purchasing some of this stone that I have found is on Ebay. And what I was looking at looked pretty good.


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Scott LaBorde RHL Administrator Offline "Rock it" science! Posts: 2971 Location: Wake Forest, NC Joined: Sep 28^th, 2010 Gender:	Re: Dendritic Doodles Reply #10 - Jan 28^th, 2019 at 8:16am	Print Post
	Very neat stuff Joe. It looks like marble or ivory after that wax layer is applied. Looks like fun carving that stuff. Thanks for sharing.

	Scott LaBorde RockHoundLounge Creator
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Rebecca God Member Offline I Love YaBB 2.5 AE! Posts: 653 Joined: Nov 11^th, 2010 Gender:	Re: Dendritic Doodles Reply #11 - Jan 28^th, 2019 at 11:18am	Print Post
	Joe, do you mean paste wax like Johnston's? One of those doodles looks like it is on its way to being a beckoning cat. Put a red collar on it and it would be super duper! Like a collar of carnelian, but brighter red ...some sort of red agate.


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JoeM God Member Offline I Love YaBB 2.5 AE! Posts: 4204 Location: Wake County, NC Joined: Sep 30^th, 2010 Gender:	Re: Dendritic Doodles Reply #12 - Jan 28^th, 2019 at 4:41pm	Print Post
	Yes, Rebecca, just a paste wax you would use on hard wood floors. I don't care for Johnstons, but Butchers or Old Masters are good brands. Johnston's is fine if that's all you can find. I was thinking that "cat" was the Geico Gekko!


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