The hambergite days started four weeks ago, at a trip to AS Granite quarry together with Knut Edvard Larsen, the 21. October to be precise.

We went up to the quarry to check numerous rumours of large natrolite pockets, with yellow apophyllite. And there was found some chiavennite there lately too…
(see http://www.mindat.org/blog.php/407/Buckets+of+chiavennite+in+AS+Granit+today%21)

We went through the newly blasted areas, working our way to the top, not finding anything to make us stay for a longer period. We even left the chiavennite alone this day, and ended up at the highest level of Tuften/AS Granite quarries. Not the summit, but the highest worked level.

I was working on some pegmatite blocks at the foot of the pegmatite, containing some rather large thorite specks – up to a couple of cm. Knut Edvard climbed up to the pegmatite and started looking. After a couple of minutes he called me to look at a nice natrolite he found. A second after he said it was not a natrolite, so I climbed after him to check it out. My suggestion was albite. He took a third look and then noticed orange crystal aggregates on some of the “natrolites”, obviuosly chiavennite, and quickly made the conclusion that the clear crystals where hambergite! Nice free standing hambergite crystals on a sample with more massive hambergite, “crystals” embedded in matrix. Acknowlegements to Knut Edvard for his knowledge - hambergite must be his mineral - well known for both Norway and Madagascar, his fields of expertise.

No surprise that this was the spot we spent the rest of our trip out this Saturday. I even got so hooked at this nice pegmatite, so I stayed a couple of hours more than Knut Edvard. But both of us came home with nice samples of hambergite and a couple of other interesting samples too. It was not only hambergite and chiavennite to be found, also crystals/crystal parts of arsenopyrite, heavily altered and rimed by secondary minerals (pharmacosiderite, scorodite or yukonite perhaps?), and some iron/titanium/manganese oxide crystals – hematite/ilmenite/pyrophanite, still to be identified.

Three weeks later I made an appointment with two other collectors, Jan Rønnjom and Torfinn Kjærnet, to go on a new trip to AS Granite quarry. Torfinn told he had found some hambergite looking mineral here a couple of weeks before. Having read my blog we had a kind of a appointment to go out this weekend, but I spent it with my girlfriend instead…

Torfinn, Jan and I went up to the Chiavennite pegmatite (see other link) and worked there for an hour or two, before we went up to the hambergite pegmatite. Torfinn confirmed that this was the place he found the hambergite-like mineral. So then it was easy to confirm that hambergite it was. And then it was just to continue looking for this nice rare beryllium borate. I stayed longer than the others this time too, and came home with some nice samples. This time I also found two good zircon samples beside the other interesting stuff.

---

In order to leave comments to this blog post, you must be registered