[Rockhounds] green county Pa.

[betdav97 at aol.com]

Hi Steve,
  First a question; why Greene County over Fayette County?
Fayette has more surface mines, while the ones in Greene are
deep mines and unless you know a miner, you won't be able to
collect and he probably won't, as they have over things on their
minds. The surface of Greene County is mainly the Dunkard
Formation, which is leaning toward the Permian, surface coals are
poor and thin. Will another area do?
  Luzern is more in the anthracite belt, and has a lot of quartz; I've
collected around Frackville and St. Clair, and have several
specimens of quartz with dickite, but have never checked
the fluorescence, but I suppose dickite may be an inhibitor.
The coals in western Pa. are bituminous, and rarely have quartz
associated with them. I only know of two exceptions, both in
the Pittsburgh seam, but one was in Tucker County, WV, and
the other in Garrett County, MD. I have quartz from both localities
and it doesn't fluoresce. You will find calcite more in the shales,
sandstone and limestone, than coal beds. The Greenbrier Limestone
in northern WV and southern Pa., has almost no fluorescence, the
sandstone is the best bet, but only weakly and the shales the same
way. Calcite in the Devonian limestones fluoresces a cream color,
except for the Fore Knobs group which can fluoresce red, blue and
yellow. under short wave. I recently collected calcite from both the
shales and the sandstones in the Pennsylvanian, they were very
disappointing as far as fluorescence. That is one of the first things I
check for. Further south in Randolph County, WV, some of the calcite
has a strong phosphorescence; but it comes from the Greenbrier
Limestone. The quartz from there also fluoresces green due to oil
inclusions. The blue fluoresceing quartz, comes from a shale.
Hope this is some help, and on a further note the igneous dike near
Adah, Pa. only cooked the coal, no mineralization. But the dike itself
has garnet, which can look nice if you make thin sections, but no
fluorescence.
Dave in Monongalia County, WV
we border on both Greene and Fayette Counties.




-----Original Message-----
From: steve chisarick <jar8912 at yahoo.com>
To: rocks <rockhounds at lists.drizzle.com>
Sent: Mon, 24 Nov 2008 9:36 pm
Subject: [Rockhounds] green county Pa.



Hi i need some calcite and quartz from green county coal area
to see if it fluoresce
found some in Luzern county and some fluoresce
thanks Steve