Big rocks with thing you can't see.

II started micro mineral collecting from Cornwall. Actually from Wheal Gorland at the now vanished dump at Baldwin’s shaft in 1976. There was quite a number of collectors there over two days in mid-summer. Well any way I had collected a bag full of veinstone with things in it, as well as a vugy red decomposed granite with more thing in it. All I had at this time was a 10x loupe, just could not make out some of the crystal habits. At this time I only had a few mineral books, one of which talked about stereomicroscopes for looking at small crystals. So the search was on for one of these, a couple of months later, I had an old Watson stereomicroscope, a bit of a strain on the eyes, but I made do. In 1983 I found out about the British Micromount Society, and went to there yearly symposium in September. I could see that my microscope was sadly lacking, compared to what other collectors were using. This was put right very soon with a new (expensive at the time) Mejia microscope. Now I was flying seeing things out of this world. And I was sticking bits of rock on black painted pedestals. and in to hinged micro-box’s. Well I soon got bored of that so blue tack was the answer, not so !, after a few years I bits of mineral shaking about in plastic box’s. Since then I've used white tack it seams to be ok so far after 5-10 years (I am not going back to pedestals). Since those early days micro minerals have taken me and my wife all over the United Kingdom, and one or two world locations. I find it far more fascinating to look down a microscope for hours, than to look a large specimen in our display cabinets for 10-15 minutes. And I am always find things I've over looked on the micro mineral matrix.

Steve Rust

Hi Steve!

I got into micromounting much the same way, though in my case it was Tsumeb rather than Wheal Gorland that gave the initial impetus. Being able to go through trays of material straight from the mine was both a pleasure and immensely frustrating, as there were *always* well formed crystals just too small to see.

My main gripe with micromounting is that whenever I look down the scope and see an interesting crystal, there is usually a hair sticking out of it, so you turn up the magnification to see what that is. Of course, when you do, there's something tabular and red on the end of it, so you turn up the magnification again, and .....

My wife is now threatening to buy me an SEM to stop the moaning.

Rick

Wife going to buy you a SEM? Wives like that are hard to find. Better be really, really nice to her!

Yes Rick Ive put an XRD-SEM on my Xmas list for those dam little nano crystals. As you say there always something just out of reach.

I saw an SEM on eBay recently. I was tempted.

I'm not to that stage yet, but what about going the whole hog and opting for a TEM?

When you invited me to see your etchings, I didn't expect to see so much degraded quartz. Really.