Quartz var. Smokey Japan Law Twin on Albite...

Quartz var. Smokey Japan Law Twin on Albite Mina Tiro Estrella, Capitan District, Capitan Mts, Lincoln Co., New Mexico, USA "A small perfect flat "closed form" Japan law twin smoky quartz of about 2 cm and transparent growing on a little crust of albite crystals. Got this specimen from Dick Jones. Dick Jones was a wonderful and entertaining talker even if you couldn't believe everything he said. He lived in Casa Grande with his wife Helen and by most standards would be called hillbillies but there were few hills where he lived. He was a great field collector and very clever in cleaning and fixing up specimens. Some years after he died Sam Nasser, who knew him well told me that he dropped in on Dick and found him back in his garage running an old fashion x-ray machine from a dentists office without any lead shielding. He was busy irradiating Japan law twins from the Lincoln County, New Mexico locality to make them smoky in color. Smoky Japan law twins are much rarer than white ones. I don't know if the story is true or not. Gary Novak who collected a lot with Dick says that he thinks the story is not true." - Rock H. Currier Anyone with half a brain can see that this Japan Twin is an exquisite matrix specimen. As to whether or not Dick irradiated them with a dental x-ray machine, the following needs to be noted: dental x-ray machines are cannot be operated for extended periods of time because they are very inefficient and generate a lot of heat. So that story may just be that: a story. This author, along with Bill Besse, discovered that Dick was secretly working a radioactive Thorium deposit in the Capitan Mountains: home of Dick's vaguely described locality for these things - the Mina Tiro de Estrella. This would account for the necessary radioactivity required to produce Smoky Quartz. When braced with this fact, Dick told us to "shut up!" It should be noted that the "Bear Prospect" locality that Rock originally attributed this specimen to produced a different variety of Smoky Quartz altogether. Overall