Hello Robert and All,
I purchased my smallish 3.9-gram P.V. slice from Cap'n Blood back in 2001
and it still looks
as fresh as it did 9 years ago. No rust but I found a golden-colored,
yellowish merrillite or apatite
(they are both phosphates after all!) crystal at one of these
metal-silicate interfaces. Regarding the
possibility that this might be rust, ...well, one look at such crystals
through a microscope (16x will
be sufficient) should reveal their true nature. This yellow crystal in my
slice is a genuine, translucent
crystal that betrays its nature through its form, its color, its
crystallinity (in my slice an elongate
prismatic crystal) and the fact that it is embedded in the metal silicate
interfacial area. Rust would be
bubbly, blisterous, grainy or powdery - it would not be translucent, it
would have the typical color
of rust (reddish-brown), and, it would protrude from the surface of my
slice or if it was really
incorporated into the matrix/metal interface, if it did not protrude from
the cut surface, it would
still be reddish-brown instead of displaying those typical colors of
apatite (green, gray with bluish
or yellowish tints - at least in hand sample).
Best wishes from
Germany,
Bernd
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