re: #266 klys (maker of Silmarils)

Yeah, I was going to say, you just go to straight silica at that point. The downside is trying to get the damn thing made in the first place.

Just had the son of my contractor knock on my front door with a rock he found, while digging around my pond, that he had serious questions about, and he knows that I started off lo these many many years ago as a geology major, specializing in Appalachia…

He was so excited because it was a new rock find for him.

Best I could tell him for the moment was that it was siltstone/mudstone with pyrite and silica sand-sized crystals and the black matrix just dissolves away in water, most probably from a Devonian/Marcellus Formation.

But I have a mostly washed chunk that is drying in the sun on my kitchen window sill, so he is waiting impatiently for more information (and has another rock for me to examine).

This is actually quite fun.