LithosphereVolume XV, Number 3 Fallbrook, California

Fallbrook Gem and Mineral Society, Inc.March 2007

Intarsia "Grist Mill" by Conrad Grundke

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Display Advertising rates for the Lithosphere a publication of the Fallbrook Gem and Mineral Society:Full page, 7”x4.5” = $120.00 for 10 months, or $14.00 per issue.Half-page, horizontal 3.5”x4.5” = $60.00 for 10 months, or $7.00 per issueHalf-page, vertical 2.25”x7” = $60 for 10 months, or $7.00 per issue.Quarter-page horizontal 3.5”x2.25” = $30 for 10 months, or $3.50 per issue.Eighth-page horizontal 1.25”x4.5” = $15 for 10 months, or $1.75 per issue.All display advertising must be paid for in advance. All

advertising in the Lithosphere must be related to the educational focus of the Fallbrook Gem and Mineral Society and its publication

the Lithosphere.

Deadline for all advertising is the15th of the month preceding

the month of publication. The Lithosphere publishes monthlyduring the 10 month period between September and June.Classified advertising is free andis limited to text only. Classified ads will be placed on the classified ad page and rununtil notification is received from advertiser to cancel ad, or at the editor’s discretionbased on space available. Editor reserves the right to edit all classified ads to fit thespace available.

Fallbrook Gem and Mineral Society, Inc.123 W. Alvarado Street Suite B, Fallbrook, CA 92028760-728-1130 www.fgms.org Email: fgms@sbcglobal.net

http://www.fgms.org/

President Vice President Secretary/Office Treasurer/Director of FinanceDirector of Facilities Director of PublicityDirector of Public ProgramsDirector of EducationDirector of Member Services

Gina PalculichMary Fong-WalkerLiz YamaguchiVanessa JonesDavid LaMarr

Bill HollingsworthElizabeth CheathemJanice Bricker

(760) 728-2196(760) 723-3484(760) 728-7233(760) 598-0152(760) 731-2188

(760) 726-5878(760) 731-0436(760)-728-1333

FGMS Museum Garth Bricker

MikeEvans Elizabeth Cheathem

(760) 728-1333(760)-414-9722(760) 731-0436

Museum Curator

Assistant Curator Gift Shop

Lithosphere Editor and Webmaster

Patricia Hartman 760-723-6624

Calif. Federation Representative

John Frey 951-677-4043

Fund Raising Chair

John Watson 760-723-6539Volunteers for Minerals RepresentativeGarth Bricker (760) 728-1333

Membership/Refreshments

Janice Bricker 760-728-1333

PublicityAnne Ondraka 760-728-8004

Programs

Mike Evans 760-414-9722ScholarshipJohn Watson 760- 723-6539

Field TripsMatt Boeck 760-216-8971HistorianLyn Huettl 760-845-0599

Inside the Lithosphere

February Meeting 3 February Board Summary 4

Garth’s World 5Announcements 8-9Field Trip Schedule 9Calendar 10Legal Information 11

Contact the editor Patricia Hartman formore information at 760-723-6624 oremail to patricia@hitekdesigns.com. Orwrite to the editor at PO Box 1390,Bonsall, CA 92003.Cover Photo courtesy of John Watson Inside photos courtesy of John Watson

FGMS March 8th Meetingat 7:00p

Intarsia vs Commesso

Conrad Grundke

Conrad(Connie)Grundke wasborn in chicago,Illinois onNovember 27,1931. He spentfour years in theUS Navy aboard

various destroyers during the Koreanconflict. Most of his working life wasspent with IBM as an engineer working for ten years in Evanston, Illinois and the lasttwenty years in San Jose, California. Heretired in 1986 after 30 years with IBM.

After visiting his father, WilliamGrundke about 1976, he began working inlapidary. Mr. Grundke, senior, lived inLaguna Hills, CA and was deeplyinvolved in the commesso (intarsia) art

form. Connie continued his lapidary workas an avocation by creating jewelry andsilversmithing until he retired and joinedhis father in Laguna Hills. Conniecompleted his first commesso in July1990, under the supervision of his father.Since then, he has created severalcommessi, which have been exhibitedthroughout the state and have won awardsin both local and American Federation

shows.In 1994, Connie was asked to take over

the Saddleback College Emeritus class inlapidary and intarsia due to the ill health ofthe current instructor, Russ Hind. Sincethen, Connie has expanded the realm ofknowledge of both local students androckhounds in the area through lectures,teaching, and exhibiting this art form andonce again has made the Grundke namesyonymous with unique and beautiful fineart.

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Big Sky

Rural Delivery

February 3, 2007Board OF DirectorsMeeting Summary OFTHE FALLBROOK GEM& MINERAL SOCIETY

Highlights of February’s regularBoard Meeting.

Treasurer Vanessa Jones is nowusing Quick Books as recommended byour accountant. The quit letter to theHistorical Society was well received. Curves’ lease payments are up-to-date. Our Strategic Plan and goals andobjectives for 2006 were reviewed.Changes will be incorporated and thedocument returned for finalizing. Themeeting with North County history-related groups was well attended and receivedgood publicity from the Village News. Dave LaMarr will handle Tails & Trails atLos Jilgueros in March.

The Architect Selection Committeeis composed of Pete Bancroft, DaveLaMarr, John Watson, Bill Hollingsworth, Joe Ondraka and Frank Messina. PeteBancroft is funding the architect with adonation of $10,800 to the TourmalineClub. The Board voted to disburse $5,400of it to Paul Johnson, the architect. Petewants to change the name of the FallbrookGem & Mineral Society’s “Gem &Mineral Museum” to the “North SanDiego County Mineral Museum.”

B.J. Cheathem has developedoperating procedures for the gift shop and

is scheduling a docent lecture series. PamBruder will give the first one on geologyand paleontology on May 12.

Matt Boeck will be doing field tripsfor Palomar, Vista and Fallbrook. Theywill be announced and also in theLithosphere. He showed his specimensgathered on recent field trips fromQuartzite.

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FGMS Dues are due by

this meeting or you will

not get in our directory.

The people bringingcookies for March are: JillLowrie, Kerith Graeber,Fuen Lopez, and Chris Toft

Deadline for Lithospheresubmissions is the 15th ofeach month. Decembersubmissions must bereceived by November 15th.

Michael Leybov, at right,publisher of the MineralogicalAlmanac, spoke in February onRussian Gold

This is thethird segment ofmy experiencesat the Red Cloudmine near Yuma, AZ. WayneThompson let me come work forhim in 1996 and1997 when hewas looking forhis big find.

I recallhearing that he put up his house to pay hisshare of the cost of the mine and JamesHorner of the Titanic movie music paid the other half. The loan was going to be calledin shortly before the Bob Johnson of themining group hit the very big pocket nearthe south end of the dike. This area wasquite a way down from where the floor ofthe mine had been when we started looking for wulfenite for Wayne. We wereworking the steep bank to the west and thedepression was to the east where theboundary of the claim was.

This area wouldn’t have been found byall those rockhounds over those 30 years Ihad worked the mine because it probablywas at a level where all the good wulfenitewas found under the fractured ground. Itwas near where the caretaker, Doug Hott,had found the timbering for the originalopening. This was south of where a group

of diggers had opened up an old 1880’stunnel going down and over to this areaand found some very rich wulfeniteground. The evidence was still there of big masses of silver rich galena. My evidencewas 1 inch etched wulfenites pouring outof a fractured rock in front of me alongwith a 1 ½ inch etched crystal. The peoplewho broke into this area must have hit thejackpot and left that little bit for me. Ididn’t actually see the 1 ½ incher. My notso young friend, Burris Short, came in thenext day and dug the rest of the 1 inchersout and found the big one. I had decidedthat etched 1 inchers weren’t all that good. Little did I know what was to follow if Ihad just kept on digging.

Oh, well. This area was rich and thepocket that Bob Johnson found was all part of this rich area and that’s why the oldminers started digging here evidenced bythe unearthing of the original timberedopening. I doubled my collection oftwenty years there in one week. I ampositive that this is where the Ed Over 2inchers came from. This is the richest spotin the mine from my observations over 30years. Another clue came while I was inthis unstable area when a 1 ½ inch floatercame sliding out of the rock and hit myfoot. It was undamaged, and of the bestRed Cloud color. I was thinking that Ishould leave this spot while I was notunder tons of rock.

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Garth's World

Garth Bricker,

FGMS Member and Museum Curator

March 2007

Graham Sutton was the person that was in charge day to day for Wayne and hadbrought his mid-sized bulldozer for use atthe mine. Bob Neukum ran the two ormore ton dump truck that transported therubble we created to a point south of thecaretaker’s shack. Bob had to go north toget out of the pit and then south along theedge of the pit to dump his load.

At one point I had been given lessonsfor oiling and greasing the bulldozed andstarted to play around with driving it anddoing work scraping and tearing out rock. I was going up against the foot of the steephill on the west to rake off some dirt andstarted to get a little off balance. Bulldozers like flat land! In a very short,short time I knew I was going to be introuble if I kept on going up the side of thehill. I would probably roll right down. Atleast I had learned how to turn the thing soI put on the left track brake and let the right track keep on turning which turned medown hill leaving me with just a big scareand a quick education, stay on levelground or almost level ground and let BobSutton do the up hill jockeying.

My job was to use the pneumatic drillwith a wedge on the end and sink it into the ground and rock and them pull itbackwards to let the loosened rock rolldown hill.. Wayne was very emphatic thatwe didn’t do too much at one time so as not to break any crystals. We didn’t see anycrystals for days and days and all winter of1996.

This area to the south where we wereand going north was pretty much blank, nowulfenite to jump up and down for andscream about.. We probably could havegone through this part of the mine usingdynamite and have done very little damage

to crystals and have found the big pocket ayear earlier with much less expense forWayne. He would have made more money not spending it on the excavator, supplies,etc. He didn’t waste any money on me thesecond year since I was paid in wulfenitethe second year.

I was happy just being there takingpictures, collecting trash wulfenite for theFGMS grab bags which other wise wouldbe hauled off to build the foundation forthe Red Cloud Hilton Hotel. I foundgypsum crystals and amethyst in layers. My second mass of copper minerals wasfound in 1997

The copper was very similar to theRowley mine mass of copper withdiaboleite replacing caledonite, pretty rare. It was just an area about 3 or 4 feet aroundand that’s all. It wasn’t too deep in to therock either. It was sure packed withinteresting micro minerals.

About four under ground miner’stunnels made around 1880 were uncovered and all not more than 15 to 30 feet downfrom the surface. You couldn’t see themfrom the surface. One went down into thelower workings and I worked on gettingpictures of this passageway. One had adoll found by Doug Hott and he brought itout for me since I collect anything from the Red Cloud.

This rag doll probably had been sittingin the tunnel lost by some little daughter ofa miner playing in the mine over onehundred and 16 years earlier from 1880 to1996. The passageways hadn’t beenwalked on for almost that long. They musthave been blocked off because all of us for30 years had never seen them or we wouldhave used them looking for wulfenite.

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About this time when the invisiblepassageways were being exposed thecaretaker showed me a map of the richareas of the under ground workings thatwas given to him. I wanted to make a copyof it for my Red Cloud collection ofantiques and memorabilia. I said I wouldgive him some slides of him and of the Red Cloud when I returned it. He said that wasfine and I took it home and had thesurveyor copy it on his big machine. I sentit back and when I went back I brought theslides. He got really unhappy and told mehe would tell everyone that came how Icheated him.

I asked how and he said I had promised to give him a copy of every slide I had ofthe mine. That was 700 slides. I think thehot Arizona sun and all the booze he had

been given had affected his brain. I neversaw him again because he died at the minea couple of years later.

About the time Pete Bancroft wasgathering information about the mines forour article in the Mineralogical Record onthe Silver District about 1990 we askedDoug if we could sleep there at the minethat night. He said, “No,’’ because he wasa hermit and that would bother him. Wehad to go to another mine for the night. Islept at the mine every time I was there forall my school vacations of Christmas andEaster and working Wayne. About 1990,when HenryVogt and I came with all ourboys, I slept in my truck and Henry bunked in one of several old buses parked at themine. They weren’t going anywhere

Lithosphere March 2007 7

because they were sitting on their floor. We didn’t ask Doug, we just did it.

When I came to work for Wayne in1996 and 97 I would get up with the firstlight and get out to photograph the sunrisewhen there were clouds. This was like agreat sunset except the opposite. Therewas so much to see and do at the RedCloud. One of my favorite things to dowas taking photographs in the mine withmultiple flashes with the camera on atripod or locked to a support. Thistechnique made, a one of a kind and neverto be done again, photograph of the laddergoing down into the mine at the mainentrance. The area is gone. excavatedaway. That wasn’t the only undergroundphoto but you can still see what I saw bylooking at the cover of the January 07issue.

The technique is to open the cameralens to bulb at dark or in the mine flashingonce at the beginning and than flash moreoften as you get farther away from thecamera. You never get the same picturedthe second try but one will look better thenthe rest if you do it several times. It makessuch dramatic pictures but not at the RedCloud. More next month.

Announcements

FINE MINERAL SALE

Over 30 choice specimens will beoffered for sale at the March meeting,ranging in price from $20 to $400. Theseare duplicates or pieces not scheduled forthe permanent collection. They have beenup for two meetings and you will haveviewing time before the meeting.

Remember the meeting starts at 7 PM, soget there early if you want more viewingtime. In case there are multiple buyers fora given piece we will probably have aone-round silent auction between thecontenders. Checks or credit cardsaccepted.

CLAUDIA WATSON WINSAT TUCSON

Following the tradition of Fallbrook atthe Tucson main show, Claudia Watsonwon a plaque for her Australianmolybdenite in the small cabinet class. There are five size classes and the entriesmust come from the nation whose minerals are being featured. Claudia is amolybdenite collector and she had anotherentry in the miniature class.

The club case featured an historicalarray of faceting machines.

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Claudia Watson

NEWS OF COMING EVENTS

The speaker for April will be DavidLynch of the Aerospace Corporation whowill speak on his documentation of the San Andres fault. His personal sideline isThule Scientific, which takes him aroundthe world to see, measure and record.

Theme for the Tucson show in 2008will be minerals of the USA

We are scheduling a joint field tripwith MSSC for May 12, which will start atPasadena City College and work byconvoy eastward to Wrightwood. Tripleader will be Dr. Janet Gordon, PCCProfessor Emeritus. There will be twooptions: see the PCC museum on Fridayevening and stay over in Pasadena or startfrom PCC at 0900 Saturday. Signups willstart at the April meeting. An advance road log may be available at that meeting or theMay meeting.

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Legal InformationThe Fallbrook Gem and Mineral Society is a §501(c)(3), non-profit, educational and

recreational organization dedicated to promote the study of mineralogy and alliedearth sciences; to study and practice the art of lapidary; and to promote goodfellowship.

Regular meetings are held at 7:00 pm on the second Thursday of each month, exceptFebruary (generally the third Thursday) and July and August (no meetings), at 123 W.AlvaradoSt. The public is invited to attend our museum located at 123 W. Alvarado. The museum is openThurs., Fri., and Sat. 11am to 3pm and during special events in the downtown area or byappointment. Annual dues are $25 for adults, $20 for each additional adult in the samehousehold; $6 per child to age 17. The initiation fee is $6 per person. Membership fees must besubmitted along with an application, obtainable from the Society or its web site.

Copyright © 2003 by the Fallbrook Gem and Mineral Society, Inc. Except for items that arespecifically copyrighted by their authors, other societies may use material published inLithosphere provided proper credit is given and the sense or meaning of the material is notchanged.

Lithosphere is published monthly (except July and August) and is sent to all members of the Fallbrook Gem and Mineral Society as part of their membership.

Exchanges: Free reciprocal exchanges for the bulletins of other gem and mineral societiesare welcomed. Please send all exchange bulletins to the FGMS Office.

Disclaimer: The opinions and conclusions expressed in Lithosphere are those of the authorsand do not necessarily represent those of the Officers, Editor, or members of the Society.

Contributions: Submissions (articles, letters, notes, announcements, photographs, etc.) areactively solicited from FGMS members. Submissions from non-members may be included atthe discretion of the Editor. Copyrighted material submitted for publication must beaccompanied with a written release from the copyright holder. Original, personally-writtenarticles will be published with a copyright notice in the author’s name if requested; otherwiseall submissions will be published without individual copyright. No anonymous submissions willbe considered; however, the submitter’s name may be withheld, or a pseudonym used, uponrequest. All material is subject to editing. Unless previously arranged, all submissions becomethe property of the Fallbrook Gem and Mineral Society. Send all submissions to the Editors.

Deadline: The deadline for all submitted material is the 20th of the month prior topublication. Allow extra time if line drawings or photographs are submitted. Editor: PatriciaHartman, PO Box 1390, Bonsall, CA 92003. Email address: patricia@hitekdesigns.com

Lithosphere Staff: Garth Bricker. Website: http://www.fgms.org/—Webmaster PatriciaHartman: Webmaster@fgms.org

Affiliations: California Federation of Mineralogical Societies and the American Federationof Mineralogical Societies.

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