Hi, Norm, List,
I too thought of carnival glass. The process of carnival
glass making goes back to the 1880's (at least). You sprinkle
a fresh hot glass object straight from the mold or furnace
with (powdered) slag containing a variety of mineral salts
and stick it back in the furnace briefly to obtain the iridescence.
The color range depends on the minerals used. The purple-
blue-goldish iridescence is a popular one for decorative art
glass. The story is that the process was discovered by
accident, dropping a fresh piece in slag dust and then trying to
burn it off. In modern manufacturing techniques, "the
iridescence is created by adding metalic oxides into the
hot glass while being formed and spraying the metallic salt
solution to the still hot surface, subsequently re-firing it in the
kiln. It was the eventual melting of the salts that created the
rainbow colors of iridescence."
Taking an existing tektite and "carnivalizing" it would
be very difficult because you'd have to heat the tektite to
an almost molten state, and the result would be iridescence
on the outer most "high points" rather than in the bottom
of the pits. Also it would be a strange thing to do; why?
A warehouse fire might be hot enough, but where would
the mineral salts come from? The box on the shelf above?
Since it has to happen when the tektite is hot, semi-molten,
the "least-effort" explanation that it fell originally on ground
which had some naturally occuring mineral salt.
Sterling K. Webb
-------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "Norm Lehrman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "MARK BOSTICK" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>;
<[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, March 10, 2006 9:55 AM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Any interesting (?) Chinese tektite
Mark & list,
About five years ago, as Cookie and I were helping our
main Chinese supplier unpack at Tucson we found a
couple of dozen like you have pictured. The
coloration is a surface patina like Carnival Glass.
We never determined how it formed, but I have seen
similar patinas developed on ghost town glass that has
been through a fire. I always suspected that the
tektites might have been through a warehouse fire.
Others suggested that an overly aggressive acid
treatment was used in cleaning, but I've tried a
variety of acids over the years and have never seen
anything like this happen.
Ironically, we were just commenting between us this
year that it is strange that we have never seen the
phenomena again. Not a single piece. This convinces
me we are talking about some non-natural feature. To
find 20 or 30 in one crate, then no more in something
on the order of 50,000 to 75,000 pieces that we have
subsequently sorted certainly provides a clue.
I looked into the commercial production of carnival
glass, but I don't remember the whole story.
Something about sublimation of a metal film on hot
glass. If you want to pursue the subject, look into
that manufacturing process for more clues.
As I recall, I sold all our pieces to a single
collector in Texas. We openly expressed our concerns
that this was probably not a natural phenomenon.
Regards,
Norm
http://tektitesource.com
--- MARK BOSTICK <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hello list,
Hope everyone is doing well.
This may or may not be interesting, as it may or may
not be that unusual.
However, I have sorted through and sold a lot of
tektites over the years and
this is the only tektite like it I have seen.
A nice average sized dumbell tektite....
http://www.meteoritearticles.com/coltektitechin76g.html
Photographs were taken under white photograph lights
in a room with white
walls. The color is more obvious in person and was
hard to reproduce
digitally. On the ends and in the surface dimples,
you can see a very
striking blue color. The ends also show a little
purple color, but more of
the blue. Not sure what has caused this colorling.
Any thoughts?
Clear Skies,
Mark Bostick
Wichita, Kansas
www.meteoritearticles.com
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