About halfway and one more bucket cleaned as of this morning, so decided to get some Super Iron Out and take advantage of the hot weather this weekend and clean up some of my quartz crystals…not all of them mind you, as I kind of like the orange stain that some of them have on them, feel it gives them distinction and some character, separates them with definition from the other crystals that are clearer. Just my humble opinion of course.

I took Mike Streeter`s advice last year and soaked them in the sink in a warm water bath first…

then transferred them to tubs outside with hott water in them….

and as you can see, I`m using Super Iron Out that you can get at Walmart or most hardware stores, its also used as a plumbing cleaning agent, so would likely be found in the plumbing section of hardware stores…I`ve seen it at Lowe`s too…

some of the quartz mines personnel will tell you to use Oxyallic Acid, not sure I spelled it right, but in most cases that takes longer and might require some type of heating element beyond the strong sun in the summertime…so I just use Super Iron Out during the day and it does real well. Anything stronger required, I`m prob going to use a diluted form of Muriatic Acid for…

In this tub, I have several smaller clusters and plates cooking in the Super Iron Out and the one in the lower left hand corner, you can see a larger crystal sticking out, this one was covered with some type of black material and the Super Iron Out is doing a good job of baking it right off and its only been in there maybe 30 minutes so far.

I am anticipating placing another plate into a tub later today, one of the plates I found in the clay pile at Miller Mountain on Sunday morning while in Arkansas two weeks ago, it came out looking smokey, cleaned up with water looking smokey, guess the real test will be after I place it in the Super Iron Out, if it comes out of there looking smokey, then it might just be smokey quartz.