About Tiffany Stone

- History of the gemstone

Fluorspar and Beryllium prospects and Mining developments.

First discoveries and early day rock hounding at the Brush Wellman Beryllium Mines.

Permanent closure to collecting and the discovery of new deposits.

- Geologic History

Ocean waters and sea floor sediments.

Continental build-up and occurrences of rich mineral concentrations.

Geothermal venting of gases - especially of Manganese and fluorine

Super volcano erupts

Tremendous amounts of volcanic ash proceeded by Rhyolite lava flows covering most of it shortly after.

Tiffany Stone: The origins and formation of it silica compositions

- Stone Qualities

Composition and description

A silica and/or calcium carbonate base predominately of opalite, and agate (chalcedony), but not excluding jasper, quartzite, and dolomite. Purples caused by fluorine gases and blacks form manganese oxide. Patterns are diverse and different form piece to piece with seldom any two stones exactly the same. Dendrites, plumes, crackly patterns, smooth ice creams, wild flows and laces occur and some times variable mixes of these happen in Tiffany stone. Hardness is variable with some too soft to cut, buy usually come in ranges form 5.5to 8.0 - about 7 on average form most cutt8ing grade stone.

QUALITY

Some of the Tiffany Stone from the Brush beryllium mines has very nice color in the nodules, some of the best material, to be true, has come from those pits. What is found in good cutting material is stable and usually hard- dominantly consisting of opalite or agates. If of dolomites, dominant or partial, then it needs to have taken on a solid marble or cherty form to be good for cutting. The greatest challenge in the mining and collecting is getting hard and stable pieces- the next is finding good color and pattern.

Those who may have good rough- bought or traded- will never know this unless they collected it if first hand. What they have has already had the fracture-easy ones taken out of it or those pieces never came out of the mines. Some who originally collected Tiffany Stone failed to make the distinction (or they salvaged it anyway), so some junky material is still out there along with the good material. Along with good, still many pieces from the Brush Mines are very fracture-easy or soft and crack into shards or crumble like unstable crazed opal- even when the colors/patterns are excellent. One already experienced in cutting the material may not have known or believed this if they started out with good solid pieces from the beginning. What makes so many pieces unstable is that they are composed of solidified/ opalized volcanic ash. If there was just a little silica bonding the ash together, then it soon falls apart with some light hammer tapping. Also, if the silica is minimal (or the ash too much- take your pick), then leaving it out side to weather will break it down. Eventually many end up breaking in a number of places as opalite often does, and the unbroken parts is what most lapidaryists have then resorted to cut. Cabochons with just a little silica can be very fragile and end up broken if not handled carefully (don't drop them either on hard surfaces!). To avoid this from being the case, as best as possible I try to targeted out pieces rich in silica or otherwise very solid and stable so it is nearly all good for cutting and carving with out the worry of it breaking so easily.

OCCURRENCE

Unless people have mined or collected this material themselves (mostly older rock hounds) , they will never know the challenge of getting a very fine piece. Finding solid pieces and ones with good color is one challenge, but the frequency of its occurrence and how much is another. Besides there being only one geologic location know for the gem, it should also be know that the only place it comes in piles is in an already collected stash. Hardly is there ever one gem just sitting on top of another and there is certainly no solid wall of it to just eat away. Most of it found at random in soft volcanic ash as nodules or in pieces found along semi layer-like zones between the ancient lime-stone formations and softer ash. Once in a while a seam of Tiffany stone (mostly agate or jasper) is found intermixed or running trough a dolomite (hardened limestone) layer, but because it is in solid rock, it is much more difficult to extract. Only a few out of many pieces found will be good enough to pass as a gem stone. In my own mining experience, I get a good piece out of every five or six pieces found or I cut off the good piece from an otherwise ugly rock- the stuff we call Junk.

Most of the material from the new developments is very similar or identical to the Brush material- if one can ever tell- though some is darker purple in color, more agatized, and comes in patterns or forms of swirls, lacing, crackled breccia effects, or intermixed variations of them all. Not as much has the creamy pastel texture like as some of the Brush may have, at least for the time being. While the colors and texture, I have no doubt, will improve as I dig deeper down, what I do offer at any rate is certainly fine and solid cutting material and I like keeping it that way.

THE BRUSH BERYLLIUM MINES CLOSURE ON COLLECTING

Brush Wellman closed collecting for many reasons. The scare that Berylliosis might be possible was hardly a main cause. Brush has never faced a real case of getting the disease from the ore in its 45 years of mining as pure beryllium metal, with causes the disease, only comes from the Ohio plant where it is refined. Beryllium by itself is too reactive to be found by itself in nature- even if it came off as rock dust from a saw. It takes a three fold chemical process to get Beryllium in its pure form. Actually, those concerns hardly came into play as to what actually lead to the ban on collecting. Most of it was about liability of injuries (or possible injuries) from those who went out collecting. Safety standards and regulations was the issue Brush had to deal with along with liabilities for injuries or death. The material around the pits was soft and gave way easily (and still does), and to rumor, some have died of the pits walls collapsing or avalanching on top of them. This was the number one issue- safety had to be enforced or liability was all too imminent. Depleting and messing up their stockpiles and strewing the roads and paths with littered rocks were other serious issues. Keeping the place orderly was necessary for loader trucks to travel in, and those with untidy hay-day collecting habits made the place a wreck many times over. Also, at the rate that some came to collect, they made a supposedly significant dent on many of the stock piles. Brush has no focus on the rocks for lapidary purposes, and has no intention to sell them. The company's only focus is using the ore to crush up for extracting out the Beryllium. They know that the rocks have the least beryllium in them and that the soft volcanic ash has the most in it, but they don't want to take time to separate, put aside or sort any of it as it takes extra time and otherwise interrupts digging and loading operations. Salvaging rocks was a distraction to costly operations and as Brush never saw a dime for all the sales of rock that came out of there, it became a cost to them far greater than any benefits they saw out of it. The rock was banned from collecting and rock hounds ( the public) were to stay out. The final clamp happened some where in the early 1990's. Had some one been thinking right some years ago and made the right business venture, this may not have become the case, but too late. After the closure, many have offered large sums of money or business proposals (including myself) to be allowed to collect and dig for all they can find out there, but Brush has refused them all. To them it has become a firm resolve, the matters too far weighed out against it, and it has become a bitter and stagnant issue that Brush has no intent to bring up again. Some have gone out any way and guards have let them go, but when discovered by the corporate members, they were fired. Latest report is that Brush will arrest and prosecute those found collecting there and they now have a stronger guards on duty out there at all times.

Upon my own resolve, when disallowed to further collect, I concluded that no long-term business could be made by dodging guards for a few rocks and risking a long term reputation should they choose to prosecute. Studying geology and the occurrence of Tiffany Stone, I went out and made my own significant discoveries. I have nothing hanging over my head now and am glad I made that choice. Since the new discovery for gem quality material was made in 2004, the commencing developments led to the discovery of even more deposits. Finding everything possible to develop has lead to the making of 4 claims. Their names are not listed here in specific but are called as a whole the Spore Mountain Lavender Mines.

GENERAL DESCRIPTION

The purple color comes from volcanic fluorine gases that got trapped in layers of silica-rich sediments- of which makes the formation opalized, agatized, and/or with jaspers, cherts, and dolomite and some times all mixed together. A volcanic eruption that happened near by spewed and churned some of this fluorine saturated sediment- making nodules- mixing in or coating the outside and making wild patterns and swirls in some of them. The sediments and volcanic ash were also rich in many other minerals including Manganese (manganese oxide makes the black color) Bertrandite -a beryllium silicate- and other trace minerals/ elements including zinc, copper, lead, iron, rhodonite, calcite, cobalt, magnesium and nickel (and many other trace minerals and elements). Because of the formation and random concentrates of minerals, this stone has rich diversity, each one a bit different. It is a highly praised, rare and very unique gemstone. Pieces come in all sizes ( some rare find have reached a few hundred pounds) but mostly they come in gold-ball to base-ball sizes. The larger, the less common it is to find.

For color, the best is of course its bright to royal dark purple colors, but pinks, oranges, reds, whites, blacks, chalcedony-clear, and even some times greens are had. When it has splashes, swirls, streams, lacing, crackles, dendrites, plumes, etc. its all the better. Generally, the more colors and patterns, the better the stone. Brilliant or contrasting colors are beautiful too, but if it is going to be a homogeneous color, it is almost always best to have it purple to one degree or another.