August 2002 Newsletter
I took the family on holiday to the UAE and Egypt. This has resulted in less items being listed as we usually do. We are back on track and are getting some excellent product. See our updates.  I visited the Griekwastad area where they mine the tigers eye. I also stayed over at the site where they mine the lovely cactus quartz and will tell you more about the site and it's people in an article further down. I cover the following articles this month What do you look for in a Web Host?  Tigers eye. My visit to Griekwastad and the site where they mine the cactus quartz. South African Overview. Copper at Messina and apatite at Phalaborwa. NEW!! Series on minerals. Zircon and other accessory minerals. This is very good reading. Lastly we have our regular Silver Hills Mineral Gallery link to our updates page. Be blessed as you read this newsletter. Gerdus

What do you look for in a Web Host?

Get it right the first time. The biggest mistake is to land up with the wrong web host. I landed upon this excellent checklist below of what you should look for when making this important choice. 1) 24x365 support --24 hours/day, 365 days per year live-human support. They must offer free unlimited technical support (by e-mail and, ideally, by phone). Test this before you sign up -- e-mail them a tough question. If you don't get an answer within 2-3 hours of calling or e-mailing, look elsewhere. 2)Guaranteed availability - Your site must be up 99+% of the time, or it will cost you more than your monthly ISP fee. Ask each potential ISP for a written guarantee on availability. They must have a clear strategy for achieving their targets. There should be a significant penalty in place for exceeding allowable downtimes. The next two steps involve sites that are already on your potential Web host. You can often find a server's hosted sites by exploring its Home Page. If not, ask it for at least 50 names, then choose 5. 3)Fast connection speed -- We have already seen how important speed is. Don't be dazzled with all the techno-jargon ('redundant T3s," etc.) -- simply see for yourself. Browse through the 5 sites and note how quickly they are delivered. Test them at different times of the day. To be really thorough, get three friends from different corners of the continent to do the same. Compare with other sites (not hosted by your potential Web host) at the same time. 4)Experience counts -- Phone the 5 sites and ask how long they have been with this Web host, about the quality and speed of support, how often it goes down or slows down severely. 5)If you choose to use a large, national Web hosting company, they should offer peering and mirroring. ISPs with peering (multi-homing) have more than one high-speed backbone. Your site gets delivered by the fastest speed available, and if one backbone is down, your site still gets delivered via one of the other backbones. An ISP that "mirrors" puts your site on several servers at different locations. This acts as a back-up and improves accessibility and connection speeds internationally. Once you've got it narrowed down to a few fast and reliable servers, find the one that can deliver your needs. First, make a list of your needs from the following. virtual domain -- You will want your own domain (www.yourcompany.com). Either register it yourself at InterNiC. or get your Web host to do it. They must do It in your name and name you as the administrative contact - your domain is yours, after all. Does this seem too obvious? There are many immoral ISPs who put it in their own names, which can cause you huge headaches when you want to switch providers (which is why they do it, of course). e-mail and autoresponders --It should offer at least 5 e-mail POP accounts, and one catch-all account which picks up anyotheraddress@yourdomain.com. These help you organize e-mail to your company, and also enhance your image. And if autoresponders are important to you, make sure your Web host offers them. secure server (SSL provided) -- This is a must for credit card sales. And your Web host must not only be secure to accept the Incoming credit card info, it must also be able to transmit that data from its computer to yours in a secure way usually via PGP~ encrypted e-mail. real-time verification -- If you want to clear credit card transactions via real-time verification and authorization, the Web host must offer Cyber Cash or a comparable service that is compatible with your merchant credit card's processing protocols. data transfer - The busier your site, the more data it transfers. Most commercial sites transfer less than 1 gigabit (Gb) per month. So any server offering 2 or more Gb per month will almost surely cover your needs. If you expect high traffic (be realistic), request "unlimited data transfer." For those that offer it, check the small print - they likely qualify this against what will "compromise their system." If so, get them to put that level in writing. storage space--You probably need less than 10 megabytes (Mb) of storage space on your server's hard disk. unless you are selling 8 Mb software or digital books, of course! But leave room to grow. access to Raw Log Files and/or on-line stats - This is a must. unrestricted FTP access -- You must be able to manage and modify your site, with no limit to the number of site updates or to the times of access. access to personal CGI bin - This is where your techie installs the CGI scripts. Verify that your host offers a large number of off-the-shelf CGI scripts and does not charge more than a minimal installation/configuration fee to install them (or zero if your techie installs). You must be allowed to run your own custom CGI scripts. shopping cart software - Depending on the number of items you'll be selling, you may need this. The Web host must either offer a shopping cart solution that meets your checklist of needs, or it must be willing to host the software solution that you have chosen. Don't choose a Web host whose shopping cart does not measure up. database support -- If you have a large catalog sales site, or if you offer data retrieval from a large bank of info, you will need this capability. bells and whistles (ask your techie) -- Streaming Audio/Streaming Video (Real Audio/Real Video), Java Virtual Machine, Chat Software, FrontPage Extensions, Platform Preference (UNIX, Windows NT, Mac OS), telnet access, Web-Based Control Panel (makes management of your site easier). payment methods - It should offer credit card or monthly/quarterly/annual billing. Web development services - Not a must, especially if you are happy with who you are currently using. Once you've made your list of needs, e-mail it to your Web hosting finalists. Ask if they can deliver. Choose the one who responds fastest and best. If their answers are poor or slow at this time, it will only get worse after you sign with them. Trust your instincts. If you don't feel comfortable doing business with an ISP, look for another. You must have a good working relationship with your server. Other tips... 1) Keep your own back-up copy of your site on your hard disk. Do not rely on your Web hosting company's promise of back-up. This is critical - failure can compromise your entire Web business. 2) Be very careful about using new start-up companies with little experience or financial base. 3) Location of the server -- Some experts fee! that it's best to choose a sharp, small local server that has come to your attention via word-of-mouth. Of course, the large national outfits have obvious advantages, too. If you can get a fast, reliable connection and top-notch, free support, location is simply irrelevant. 4) Price - You may think it strange that I have not talked about price yet. There's a good reason for that It's not important! I laugh when people strain over whether their Web host charges $15, $50, or $100 per month. What the heck difference does it make? It's all peanuts compared to what a real store costs in the real world, and it's nothing compared to how important your Web biz is! Services with unusually low prices often don't deliver on reliability and support. If you find a fast, reliable, supportive Web host who keeps you on the cutting edge, it's worth its weight in gold. Don't hesitate to pay a little more for a superlative service -- it's well worth the extra money

Tigers eye. My visit to Griekwastad and the site where they mine the cactus quartz. I received an order for tigers eye with veins that is 7cm and thicker. I have seen single pieces that match up to the order specification but have never seen tigers eye that is that thick in plentiful supply. I agreed to source it for the client because of a misunderstanding between me and another person who had a good supply of tigers eye. He quoted me on his good stash but he forgot to tell me that his quoted price was for a pound weight. I have never dealt in pounds, we grew up with kg and liters and have never dealt in pounds and gallons in South Africa. I secured the order and then went back to my supplier who told me that he meant pounds and not kg's. This left me in a predicament. I left the next day for the area where they mine the tigers eye. I travelled with my brother Sas. We arrived in Griekwastad where we met some colorful people who has dealt in stones all their lives. We landed up in the local pub where we were supplied with the names of all the major dealers and miners in Tigers eye. We have found the local pub to be a good source of information anywhere. The next day we ended up in a yard where we saw sack upon sacks of tigers eye that was bagged for export. Destination: China. We were told that most of the tigers eye lands up in China/Hong Kong where it gets processed.   Tiger's-eye is a variety of rich golden yellow to brownish quartz. It is polished as a semiprecious ornamental stone to display its characteristic band of pearly luminescence resulting from reflection of light from parallel inclusions, called chatoyancy. The quartz originally contained fibers of crocidolite, a bluish asbestos; their alteration to iron oxides produced color banding. Silica subsequently replaced the iron oxides. In the similar blue-colored gem hawk's-eye, the crocidolite fibers were replaced by silica before alteration. We asked them for tigers eye that is 7 cm's thick and we were laughed at. Most tigers eye is 2.5 to 4 cm thick and very little is thicker than that. If you do get a thicker stone you must just be willing to pay more for it. The owner of the yard then agreed to sell us some of his personal stash that was collected over a period of five years. I managed to get enough product to fill my order. See the two pieces of thick tigers eye that I kept aside on my rough page. I lost two tires on my way back due to the poor quality of the roads.  My visit to the cactus quartz mines. I have been visiting the cactus quartz mines at least once a week. I have come to know the site fairly well. I secured a large order for some of the quartz that is destined to go to Taiwan and had to stay over at the site to fill the order. I have befriended a lady there called  Maria. She was widowed about five years ago and have recently started to mine some of the quartz herself. I asked her to be my contact at the mines to keep me informed if she finds anything new or exciting. She also buys all the pretty quartz for me when they become available. Maria invited me to stay over at her house. I arrived at the site in the late afternoon. We then walked up to the most recent diggings to see what was coming out. We discovered that they had struck a good pocket of large quartz points. I then made arrangements to see what other large quartz has come out in the past two days. We then travelled to the other side of the village to see the large quartz points. I was disappointed when I saw the damage to the pieces. Almost all the points had some contact marks on them. (Contact marks caused by digging with metal objects.) We did get two large pieces with minimal damage. These had excellent color. I was fortunate to sell them as soon as I got home. The points were 40 to 50 mm across with reds and yellows. I predict that this site will deliver quartz in the future that will land up in every major collection in the world. My stay at Maria's house was most memorable. I stayed in my own room which was well furnished with a cupboard, dresser and double bed. The house itself was build around the kitchen  which is the heart of the home. Here resides the large coalstove that keeps the house warm and cooks the food. The coalstove is an antique that was handed down trough the family line. There is no running water in the house. The water must be fetched from outside. Washing and bathing is done in a small basin in your room with warm water from the coalstove using candles as your source of light. The toilet facilities is outside the house in a small outhouse that is called a longdrop. This basically means a smelly hole in the ground. This visit brought me back to a state of thankfulness for everything we take for granted. The next morning I was woken at 5.15 with some tea. The chickens were up and the sun was due to rise soon. Time to get up. Our first visitors was coming at 6.00 and we had to be ready to receive them. I ended up buying 300 kg's of quartz. Each individual crystal was hand selected by me. What I found interesting was the diverse nature of the quartz that is coming out now. There are long tall yellow fingers and then there are flat plates of purple similar to the Brazilian quartz. Then there are some light purple drusy quartz with some fingers here and there and I forgot to mention the red quartz fingers. Currently there are over 50 small miners digging. Only 1-3 % of the quartz is purple. Most are white and yellow. See my quartz, citrine and amethyst page for a feel of the different kinds. A word of warning came to me when I heard that a buyer was recently held up by knife at the diggings. I do not know if he lost all his money or not. It is advised that you go with people you know and that you only buy from the recognized miners. The site is in the bushveld granites and will not be disclosed at the moment due to an understanding between the different people who has interest in the quartz that is mined there. It was known as Magalies quartz before, but this mountain range do not fall under the Magalies. The name is thus a misnomer.  We prefer to say that it is cactus quartz from Mpumalanga that is mined in the bushveld granites. I welcome any enquiries and will be happy to sell this exciting quartz wholesale in quantities of 30 kg's and more.

South African overview: Copper and apatite Gold, copper and iron were the earliest minerals mined in Southern Africa. In prehistoric times these three metals were mined extensively, especially in Zimbabwe, and practically every surface outcrop in the country was worked. On a strange, isolated, flat-topped hill known as maPhungubwe (place of jackals), in the Northern Transvaal, a long-vanished tribe known as the Leya had a settlement which has left modern archaeologists with a rich treasure trove in beads, bangles, ornaments and plates, all made of solid gold. These ancient miners all seem to have been women. The males worked at the smelters where they poured the molten metal, iron as well as copper, into moulds scooped in the ground and, for some reason lost in tradition, shaped like cooking pots with clusters of small legs at the bottom. These were standard trade items, accepted all over Southern Africa. In the late 1890s a white hermit, called Wild Lotrie, who lived in the wilderness, told a prospector in Rhodesia, John Grenfell, about the primitive mines. Only after the South African War did Grenfell manage to reach the area. He was guided to the numerous workings by a man who was the last known survivor of the original mining tribes. His people had long abandoned the area, leaving to it the name of Musina. Grenfell was staggered at what he saw. The area was a veritable landscape of copper, overgrown with a wild garden of baobab and mopane trees. There were numerous disused shafts and adits, many having been abandoned when they were flooded at the water table. Grenfell pegged the area, and the great modern copper mines of Messina came into being. The mine is now closed. The original miners had wandered southwards looking for new copper deposits. Legend has it that chance led them to a vast, savanna-covered plain, rich in wildlife and with a cluster of strangely shaped, isolated hillocks rising up abruptly through the bush. It was an area with an atmosphere of aloofness, unfriendliness and strangeness; and, indeed, there was something very peculiar beneath the surface. The wandering prospectors found signs of considerable mineralization, but they had not the technical knowledge to understand the clues. The prospectors continued the search further south, but were disappointed. They then returned to the scene of the first discovery and named it Phalaborwa (better than the south). They settled, and later mined some of the area's rich deposits of copper and iron. European prospectors observed the ancient workings and the broken-down smelters and forges. They pegged claims and started a number of little mines, working against fever, isolation, heat and a prodigious population of big game. Then, in the early 1930s, a German geologist, Dr Hans Merensky, realized the economic potential of the area. About 2000 million years ago a gigantic volcanic eruption had taken place. The level area with the fragmented hillocks was the base of a vanished crater. The throat was choked with an assortment of minerals as astonishing as the kimberlite in the diamondiferous pipes. The mouth of the vast pipe occupied 18 square km, and it contained to an unknown depth such minerals and metals as apatite, copper, gold, iron, mica, vermiculite and zirconium. The deposit of vermiculite is the largest in the world. This is a mineral related to mica and much used for heat and sound insulation in modern industry, and in the hydroponics cultivation of plants. Merensky started mining vermiculite in 1938. Then the apatite deposit was mined. Apatite is a phosphate of lime combined with fluoride or chloride of lime, and is in great demand as a fertilizer. As with the vermiculite, the depth of the deposit is not yet known. Its extent is prodigious - sufficient for all the needs of Southern Africa and much of the world for hundreds of years to come. Close to the apatite there lies a deposit of copper estimated at 300 million tons. Magnetite (iron ore) is also mined from a huge deposit in the same volcanic throat. Zirconium and uranium oxide, of great value in nuclear reactors, are also mined.
Zircon and Other Accessory Minerals For centuries zircon has been recovered from the stream gravels of Ceylon and Burma and used as a gem. It is usually a shade of red or brown but more rarely may be green, violet or even colorless. The red and the yellow, known as hyacinth and jacinth respectively, have long been highly prized as gemstones. When liberated from the enclosing rock, zircon is always found in the form of square prismatic crystals terminated by a pyramid. Although its hardness (7.5) is greater than that of quartz, the crystals recovered from stream gravels are usually somewhat rounded and the faces indistinct. But a water-worn pebble when cut has a brilliance that approaches that of a diamond, and the colorless zircons from Matura, Ceylon, were called "Matura diamonds." Even today many a colorless zircon is set in an engagement ring for the young man unable to buy the far more expensive diamond. The most popular zircon is the beautiful blue stone, with a touch of green, sold under the name starlite. Although some crystals of zircon are naturally pale blue, a far more attractive color is produced by heating. Most of the gem zircons that reach western markets have been heat-treated. When heated in air, brownish, off color stones usually turn a golden yellow but some become colorless; if heated without air, a blue or colorless stone may result. The art of producing more attractive gems by heating was a Secret passed down from one generation to another, and only recently has the process been scientifically recorded. Zircon is a zirconium silicate (ZrSiO4) in which the German chemist, M. H. Klaproth, in 1789 discovered the then new element zirconium. Since then it has been learned that most zircon contains about two per cent of hafnium, an element first discovered in zircon in 1923. Thus the tiny crystals of zircon accumulated in beach sands are the ores of two metals used in the construction of nuclear reactors. However, most of the zircon because of its chemical inertness and high melting temperature is used in the manufacture of refractories and ceramics. Rutile, another accessory mineral, occurs in crystals very similar in shape to zircon and is usually found in slender square prisms terminated by a pyramid. But it lacks the glamor of the zircon for, although it has a high luster, rutile found in nature is rarely used as a gem. The mineral is a dark red to black and the occasional stone that is cut has a high metallic luster like gun metal. Long slender needles of rutile are present in rock crystal known as rutilated quartz, or Venus' hairstone. With advancing technology many minerals, including rutile, have been synthesized. It is made by the Verneuil process, the same method used for the synthesis of ruby and sapphire. Natural rutile is essentially titanium dioxide, TiO2, but usually contains minor impurity elements. By using chemically pure starting material, single crystals of rutile have been produced that are nearly colorless and have only a faint yellow tinge. Cut into stones, this synthetic material with refractive index and dispersion higher than diamond makes dazzling gems. Their hardness is unfortunately low and they are subject to scratching when worn in jewelry. The rutile that is recovered from beach sands is used as an ore of titanium metal. The largest use of this element is as a paint pigment in the form of the oxide, but rutile is too impure and the pigment is obtained principally from the mineral ilmenite. The mineral monazite acquired its name, which comes from the Greek word monazein, meaning to be solitary, because it occurs in isolated grains. In fact, it is only through the agency of running water that, with one exception, significant accumulations have been formed. The exception is in Cape Province, Republic of South Africa, where a dikelike body of monazite has been mined. Monazite is a phosphate mineral, (Ce, La, Y, Th)P04, containing several of the so-called rare earth elements, including thorium, and it is because of the thorium that monazite commands scientific and commercial attention. Late in the nineteenth century thorium nitrate was used in the manufacture of the popular Welsbach gas mantle. Although thorium has some minor uses today, its major use in the future will undoubtedly be as a source of atomic energy, for it is needed in the preparation of uranium, U233, a fissionable isotope. Although sphene is an abundant accessory mineral in many igneous rocks, its low hardness and easy cleavage prevent its accumulation in placer deposits and beach sands. Interest in it is centered on those few localities where it is found in rocks in large amounts or in crystals of exceptionally fine quality. Large crystals of sphene occur in many colors but the pale yellow and green transparent varieties are of most interest to the gemologist. Stones cut from such crystals have a brilliant luster with a fire surpassing that of diamond and make gems of incomparable beauty. However, they lack an essential attribute of a gem stone-hardness. They are much too soft to be used in jewelry. The principal source of transparent sphene crystals is the St. Gotthard district in Switzerland. Another source but of non-gem material is on the Kola Peninsula of northwestern Russia where a group of nepheline syenite rocks containing concentrations of many unusual minerals is found. Sphene is scattered through these igneous rocks; but at one locality it is found as a major constituent. Since 1932 in this area, called the Khibina tundra, the Russians have been mining sphene as a source of titanium. Apatite is a mineral of low hardness and high solubility. Therefore, unlike many of the other accessory minerals, it does not accumulate in placers or beach sands, but disintegrates in place, as rocks are weathered. It is fortunate that it does so for apatite is calcium phosphate, Ca5(P04)3F, and although when it breaks down chemically some of the phosphorus is washed into the streams and eventually to the sea, some remains behind in the soil and provides one of the elements most important for plant life. The phosphorus taken up by plants is passed on to the animals, including man, that feed on vegetable life and is incorporated in their bone structure. Our teeth are phosphates with a chemical composition very similar to apatite. Some of the phosphorus that reaches the ocean forms chemical compounds that accumulate on the sea floor; some is taken up by fishes and other marine life and when they die their hard parts settle to the bottom and may build up thick beds of phosphates. It is from such ancient deposits, now elevated above sea level, that we derive the phosphate for fertilizers necessary for agriculture. Millions of tons of this phosphate are mined each year. The world's largest deposits are in northern Africa, and all of the countries bordering on the Mediterranean produce it. In the United States, it is produced principally in Florida, Tennessee, Montana and Idaho. In Quebec and Ontario in Canada, well-formed crystals of apatite are found in coarse crystalline limestone in such large concentrations as to permit commercial mining of phosphate. On the Kola Peninsula in Russia, there are even larger deposits of well-crystallized apatite, associated with nepheline syenite rocks. Since 1932 these have supplied enough phosphorus for the fertilizer needed in the vast agricultural programs of the Soviet Union. Apatite is usually nontransparent and some shade of green or brown, but it is also sometimes found in yellow, blue, violet, or colorless transparent crystals that may be cut into gems. Apatite of gem quality has been found in many places; two of the most notable occurrences are the richly colored purple crystals from Auburn, Maine, and the yellow-green crystals of Durango, Mexico. Magnificent stones have been cut from them but unfortunately the low hardness makes apatite a poor gem
UPDATES	Visit our updates page to see what we have been up to, we do a daily update when we are not out hunting down rocks. www.mineralgallery.co.za/updates.htm I will be selling a lot of Kuruman minerals wholesale. There is apophylite, hematite, rhodochrosite, calcite and others. We sell these minerals by the flat. Please enquire.