I had a trip to As Granite together with Jan Stenløkk, last Wednesday, August the 5th. After a visit to the Fen complex where we collected romanèchite, pyrolusite, baryte, calcite and goethite, and of course some of the igneous rocks, like the carbonatites; søvite and rødberg. It was well after midday and working time for the quarry-workers, that we arrived at AS Granite quarry. We went up to the now famous pegmatite at level 1, to look for astrophyllite, leucophanite and of course more behoite.
We found all three minerals and a couple of samples with galena and litharge as well.

The pegmatite wasn’t that rich after several collectors heavy working, so we decided to go and have a look at some blocks that newly had been started to work on. After the Kongsberg symposium, some nice natrolite vugs were found in the same part of the quarry. We didn’t find any large natrolite vugs, but at one surface where the block had broken along a pegmatite I saw some orange crust that caught my interest. It proved to be crusts of chiavennite, and in some parts there were small vugs with good crystal-groups of chiavennite. It was getting late, and time to return home for dinner.

Looking at the chiavennite material wasn’t really the reason for my return on Friday the 7th. It was the hope that the behoite rich pegmatite was blown, and fresh material was accessible… It wasn’t, but I stayed to work on some spots that might could have some potential. I haven’t checked it all if there was any behoite. I did some work on the leucophanite/astrophyllite rich part as well, and got out one nice astrophyllite and some leucophanite masses, but nothing to get excited about.

I continued to the chiavennite rich pegmatite just 100m to the east of the behoite pegmatite, and started to look through some of the rocks round there more closely, and that got me excited! The chiavennite was obvious, and it was a pretty good quality as well, the orange colour didn’t disappear as the rock got dried, so it resembled the nice famous Vevja quarry chiavennite, but not that rich... But what made it exciting were some larger zonated, spherical crystal aggregates that had a white core. Just the way tvedalite usually occurs!




I can’t say for sure it’s tvedalite, but it might be. I hope to get it analysed, I have enough material. Beside the chiavennite and possible tvedalite, this pegmatite also had some nice pyrochlore crystals, magnetite crystals, epididymite aggregates and some exceptional large zircon crystals – unfortunately the zircon was not very well developed, and full of fractures making them breaking into small fragments. But for the one of you to go there first tomorrow (?) there is a 2,5cm x 3,5 cm crystal sitting in the lower part of the block near the vertical fracture of it.

I continued to work in this pegmatite until I felt my blood-sugar vent a little to low, and a headache was starting to get to annoying… So it was just to wrap up the nice little goodies… But on the way back down I just had to look at a couple of other places they where working, and on level 3 there was a newly broken block that showed up to be pretty interesting. It was rich in natrolite vugs, crystals up to 2 cm of nice colourless natrolite in vugs to 30-40 cm across. Being starved, I was satisfied getting a couple of good groups with not to many dings, and then I went home!

But have to conclude that AS Granite quarry have started up the autumn season pretty well. Hope it will last!

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