New Zealand Gold Prospecting & Metal Detecting Forums Archive

Its most likely Cinnabar which is an ore of mercury. Cinnabar is commonly found in the Coromandel and has a specific gravity of 8ish so it will be a lot heavier then Jasper (SP of around 3). I would doubt that the silvery bits are native mercury but most likely another mineral in association.

Can you scratch it easily with a pocket knife? Cinnabar is fairly soft (about the same as your fingernail) whilst jasper is as hard as glass.

Thanks for your replies, I have scratched it.
Stainless steel, high carbon steel, and high speed steel mark it like a pencil with no scratching.
Tungsten steel scratches it but it takes some doing.
I tried breaking it with my pick up the river but only got small flaky chips off it
It maybe from tailings of an old mine as there are a few in the area.
Next time I am up the creek I will see if I can find a bit for you Lammerlaw, there must be more.

Pardon my ignorance however I thought there were a couple of West Coast shops that essentially marketed goodelite? I would have thought that they must have a source to do that

The Goodeltite is also known as 'Ruby Rock' and is not associated with cinnabar and is sourced from the West Coast

Interesting indeed as cinnabar is supposed to be about 8.1 and your sample is only 3 if I have it right. Its hardness is 2 or slightly higher.

Cinnabar can ooze small blobs of native mercury and the Spanish cinnabar mines were know for the richness of the ore and the miners used to become affected by Mercury poisoning. Mercury poisoning affects the Kidneys and Liver and also the Brain - hence the saying 'As mad as a Hatter' because Hatters or hat manufacturers in the old days used Mercury in the hat manufacturing process and went quite mad - quite mad - quite mad...like The Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland.

When we were kids at school they let us play with it - roll it along the desk - roll it around in the palms of our hands - have fun with it and I clearly remember the teacher giving us a charcoal block and Bunsen burner with a blow pipe and we put Mercury Oxide powder onto the block then heated it to release the oxygen leaving behind globules of liquid mercury which we tried to keep one way or another eg trying to wrap it in our handkerchiefs to take home! From this you can rest assured that you dont need to be a Hatter to be quite mad!

I also clearly remember trying to swipe everyone elses Mercury...plus the school supply of liquid Mercury as I had this marvelous and magical book - which I still treasure - printed in 1878 called 'Chemists receipts' and it had chapters devoted to making fireworks and the magical word EXPLOSIVES! Mercury could be made into Fulminates of Mercury which was fairly devious stuff. Although I never did it they say that you could put little globs of it on the window and when a fly walked on it then the thing got blasted to Eternity or at the very least got its legs blown off...I am not so sure if the SPCA protects flies or not so I shant say too much more here. I didnt try it as I was somewhat scared of what my old man would do to me if I blew the window to bits after all he flew right off his perch when I managed to blast a simple hole through it when I shot a big blow fly with the .22 - if he gave me a good hiding for making one measly hole in the window I hate to think of what he might have done if the entire window had gone west. The other day I noticed back home that the venetian blind still has the hole where the .22 bullet went though it!

In any case I am itching to find out what your rock is so do hope that you give us an official report. The SG doesnt mean much if the entire rock is not cinnabar. If it is mostly siliceous sinter with the cinnabar on the outside then you could still have cinnabar so I am curious and do hope that you get us some answers.

To finish this blow flies also had another use and some of the members might remember blow fly bombers made from four blowflies (alive of course) and one match halved up the middle! I know that has nothing to do with cinnabar but it has got something to do with blowflies and I think I mentioned something to do with blowflies up above...I think I also mentioned the affects mercury had on Hatters...and cinnabar miners...they went quite mad - quite mad - quite mad!!

Edited by user Saturday, 18 May 2013 1:05:28 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Those images are pretty tiny but it looks like haematite, iron (III) oxide, I'm basing that just off the red colour mainly and the sort of metallic look in the first pic

I took my piece of red rock to Ashley at the local gold stamper and his opinion was that it was jasper with pyrite and opal.
Still not happy as I thought pyrite was a brassy color not bright silver blobs that look exactly like little balls of mercury when magnified. I then took it to the local mineral/gem guru who straight away told me jasper and were I found it, he was right on the money with location, and showed me some he had, he thought the silver was also pyrite and also said it contained agate and opal. He also kindly offered to cut it to see what we can find inside, as he has not seen jasper with pyrite like that inside before.
He also showed me 2 large pieces of Coromandel cinnabar and they looked just like your samples Lammerlaw.
I agree with the jasper, opal and agate and should be with the pyrite, people with a lot more experience than me.
I will wait until it is cut and post a photo.
Thanks to all those who have taken an interest, this has been nagging me all week.

Ive had the piece of jasper cut and all those grey/silvery looking lines of supposed "pyrites" still look like ouzzing mercury to me under about 60 to 100 magnification, again I will take it to a guy in thames next week who is up on his minerals
I will send you the offcut Lammerlaw.