Davidite-(Ce) & (La)

Rudy, Thanks for the images. If you will upload them officially to mindat with captions and copyright info, Ill use them in the article.
Rock

Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/21/2009 07:33PM by Rock Currier.

John
The Davidites from the Radium Hill mine and surrounding prospects (including Billeroo) are usually labelled as Davidite-La, but I have not seen an analysis.

Regards,
Ralph

Rock,

I posted the photos of the Davidite from Zambia

Rudy

Rudy, Thanks, the article has been updated.

Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.

Davidite-Ce- Tuftane, Frikstad Iveland

Pavel is correct as always, this is the type locality for Davidite-Ce. It is one of the rare occurances where finding a new, previously unknown mineral is a bad thing. The appearance of Davidite-Ce is quite similar to gadolinite, and the holotype material was sold as part of a gadolinite shipment from Tuftane. The shipment was of course returned for re-sorting when it was found out that a lot of the material was not gadolinite.The miners lost a substancial amount of money, but science ( in this case professor Neumann) discovered and described a new mineral.

After running through a few bags of material, the miners found it quite easy(!) to distinguish the two minerals based on lustre and specific gravity.

It is believed that no more than 200kgs of Davidite-Ce has been found at Tuftan. Neumann describes it's appearance as "elongated masses with semi-linear outline, and lengths exceeding 20 cm" , or, to use the words of the miners, the Davidite-Ce masses looked like flounders.

According to Neumann, crystals are extremely rare, he specifically mentions that only 5 small, inclomplete crystals has been found. This is an under-estimation as crystals and crystal fragments has found it's way into collections.

There are very few specimens on the market today, and the value is difficult to estimate, but anyone with a davidite crystal from Tuftane should be aware that they have a quite unique specimen in their collection, and the large specimen with several crystals displayed at Setesdalen Mineral Park is truly a one of a kind specimen.

Davidite

DAVIDITE from a rare 1970-1971 find!
According to an article on MINDAT,during a uranium search in 1971 the Italian company SOMIREN found, along the Luswishi River, some radoactive anomalies later recognized as Davidite. Davidite found here reached 10-12 cm (according to the MINDAT archive), though one specimen we have here is LARGER. They were found only near-surface, a real aberration. The specimens collected were sent back for study in Italy and never seen on the market. However, they turned up recently and the largest are presented here.

REFERENCES:

Picenza B. (1975) - Nuovo gacimento di Davidite nello Zambia - Notizie del Gruppo Min,. Lombardo, Milano, fasc. 1, March 1975,pp. 13-14

RIVISTA MINERALOGICA ITALIAN 1:1975

Rob Lavinsky

Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.

Davidite
Billeroo Prospect
Plumbago Station
SA, AU biggest 4x4cm

Trevor, Thanks for the pictures. I have placed them in the best minerals article. What can you tell us about the prospect? Anything about its geology, history? Other minerals that have been found there? How many crystals have been found, any on matrix? Largest? What is the current status of the place?

Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.

Hi Rock

Just thought I could give you an update on the Billeroo prospect and the Radium Hill mines. I have uploaded an article here on mindat about the Billeroo prospect that covers the history, geology, mode of formation, etc. Billeroo Article or there is a PDF version of my article on the Broken Hill Mineral Club website Broken Hill Mineral Club which has location maps included.

The Radium Hill mine is best described in two South Australian Geological Survey publications - Bulletin 30 - Uranium Deposits in South Australia (1954) by Dickenson and Sprigg and - Bulletin 34 - Regional Geology and Mineral Resources of the Olary Province (1958) by Campana and King. I don't know whether you can get access to either of these. I bought my copies via the web booksellers.

I'm hoping to go down to Plumbago over the last weekend of September.

Trevor

Cheers, from my little piece of the Sunny Australian Outback...

Trevor,
Thanks for the update. Would you mind if I used some, most of or all of your article in the Davidite best minerals article? I would suggest that in your article that you at least put your name at the top or bottom of the article so that people reading the text can know who the author is.

Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.

Hi Rock

That's fine. Use whatever you want, including photos or maps. I can upload the higher resolution map files if you would like.

Regards

Trevor

Cheers, from my little piece of the Sunny Australian Outback...

Trevor,
The article is interesting but it is in a PDF format and it is something that I can easily manipulate without the full blown Adobie Acrobat soft ware which is now about $500. Can you provide a the text and images in a not PDF format. The images perhaps in jpg form?
Rock

Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.

Rock, there are online services that will do the conversion.

Thanks for the reference. It doesn't sound like it will handle images though. Do you know if it will handle images?

Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.

I think that a lot of photo edit programs can input pdf files. Then just go in and crop and then save to a jpeg format.

You can also copy a photo to the clipboard (Select an area and copy it). Most photo programs will allow you to paste an image from the clipboard - Although the quality will probably degrade a bit.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/18/2012 02:25PM by David Von Bargen.

The program you referenced allowed me to copy the text I needed to a word format, but with a bit of editing it worked out OK. Ill try what you suggest with the images and see how that works out.
Rock

Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.

Hi Rock

Adobe reader - which is free - allows you to take a snapshot of any section of the document and paste it into another document such as a word file, or straight into MS Paint. You can then save it as a JPEG file. The trick I found is to zoom in on the document, then select the area to be copied and it will save at a higher resolution. I'll upload the map pictures this week for you anyway.

Regards

Trev

Cheers, from my little piece of the Sunny Australian Outback...

Trevor,
I should be able to figure that out, thanks. I think you should make a mindat article out of what you have written. We will eventually have a method of searching for Mindat Articles. If you do, that won't stop me from using much of what you wrote in the best mineral article.

Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.

Hi Rock

I don't quite get your last post... I did the mindat article with some pictures of the davidites, just not the maps. I assume you checked both links I put in my earlier post?

Trevor

Cheers, from my little piece of the Sunny Australian Outback...

Have uploaded the maps and incorporated them into the article here on mindat. I hope this makes it easier for you to use the info.

Regards Trevor

Cheers, from my little piece of the Sunny Australian Outback...