[Rockhounds] Bismuth

[Rock Currier]

Glen,
 Subject:  Re: bismuth
Name: David Von Bargen
Date and Time: 08-02-2008 at 06:05:59

Date and Time: 07-30-2003 at 15:02:26

>From Rock Currier via MSA Talk List

I may be able to offer some insights on how to grow bismuth crystals. We
have been doing it for sometime in a rather low tech way on an old
electrical kitchen stove we bought for that purpose. We just take the metal,
it has to be quite pure and put it in a stainless steel bowl and heat it up
to melting and then cool it off. We have to insulate the bowl to keep it
from cooling down too much and we also have to insulate the top which we do
by floating an insulating substance on the top of the bismuth with little
screws going down through the insulation into the molten bismuth and then
let the melt cool down a little. At the proper time you just lift off the
insulation and magically there are beautiful bismuth crystals growing on the
screws. It is a bit of an art form and takes some trial and error to get a
feeling how long you have to wait. Wait too long and the bismuth crystals
grow "wall to wall". We really have not managed to work out the kinks to
make it more than marginally successful in a commercial sense. To do that
you need to grow the bismuth crystals so that they are long and slender or
very hoppered so that you get maximum visual appeal for the amount of
bismuth in your crystal cluster. Ours sell, but are really to heavy for the
size to be able to take over the market for bismuth crystals to any great
degree. Not that there is any large market for these thing anyway. The
production of these things is somewhat labor intensive and requires constant
close attention. Probably someone in China will start making these things
and blow everyone else out of the market.
Yours truly, Rock Currier