Seeking peace of mind!

[roustabout149]

Roger, I need your help. I have been told this is a modern piece, which is highly probable, since it was purchased quite cheap on ebay, but guaranteed authentic. It's mine either way! I have had two members comment, one believing it to be granite, and the other, steatite. (soapstone) I have personally ruled out that it is either. It's next to impossible to get a photo of the metallic-like material that is within the wedges carved into the piece. Metallic-like meaning a highly blinding silver-tone material. At least in the light! The material is very hard, not at all soft, and the toothpick experiment failed. I can't even scratch it with my thumbnail when applying much pressure. Even though, "I", ruled out both of the above, it doesn't necessarily mean that the piece isn't one of the two. If you would take a look, I would very much appreciate it. The photos are the best I can provide. Sorry

[Butch Wilson]

Hey Pam, while you are waiting on Roger, let me take a guess. To me it looks like schist, and that red quartz object as you called it, looks like a Garnet. I'll be waiting with you to find out.

[painshill]

Hi Pam
It looks at least semi-glassy and I can see vesicles, so it ain’t granite, I would say. Also, as you say, if it’s not soft it ain’t steatite. When you see vesicles in a rock it’s generally safe to assume it has a volcanic origin. Low levels of small vesicles would suggest it formed from a viscous magma. Igneous rocks are on a spectrum from aphanitic  to phaneritic to porphyritic, depending on whether their component minerals are respectively not visible, just visible or easily visible to the naked eye. Yours is phaneritic.
Putting all of that together, my best guess would be that it’s dacite and the shiny silvery deposits you can see are striations of plagioclase feldspar - one of the primary mineral constituents for dacite. The best material for knapping would be aphanitic, glassy dacite which is what we most commonly see in dacite points, but dacite comes in all grades.
Here’s a piece of low-grade stuff from North Carolina:

The key defining characteristic of schists is that they are “foliated” – they can be readily split into layers along the (frequently visible) planes of their component minerals. As a result, they are also commonly brittle or splintery (with two different hardnesses, with and against the grain, as it were). I don’t see it here.
I agree that the reddish-brown phenocryst inclusion looks like garnet, which would be common in schists. But garnet is an indicator mineral for rock formed under high pressure and so is an increasingly common inclusion as you move through the rhyolite-andesite-dacite progression.
Painshill

[CliffJ]

Butch Wilson wrote:

Hey Pam, while you are waiting on Roger, let me take a guess. To me it looks like schist, and that red quartz object as you called it, looks like a Garnet. I'll be waiting with you to find out.

I was going to say a mica schist next, Butch. It is a little harder than steatite (which CAN be polished to a hardness as we see with pipes and ornaments) but has more impurities (like gold, in one schist gorget from near my home). And some steatite has so much iron in it's even hard to grind. Either way, you're not going to knap either steatite or schist. 
But beyond the debate on the material, does no one else see the dremel tracks across the face of this piece? These pics show it very well. And the uniformly beveled faces in the notches?? My kids used to make things like that with the chainsaw file on scraps of steatite and pipestone in my shop. I'm sure they threw them at a squirrel about 15 years ago! If I can find a scrap, I'll make a point with a dremel and take some pics.

[painshill]

[QUOTE]CliffJ wrote:

Hey Pam, while you are waiting on Roger, let me take a guess. To me it looks like schist, and that red quartz object as you called it, looks like a Garnet. I'll be waiting with you to find out.

I was going to say a mica schist next, Butch. It is a little harder than steatite (which CAN be polished to a hardness as we see with pipes and ornaments) but has more impurities (like gold, in one schist gorget from near my home). And some steatite has so much iron in it's even hard to grind. Either way, you're not going to knap either steatite or schist. 
But beyond the debate on the material, does no one else see the dremel tracks across the face of this piece? These pics show it very well. And the uniformly beveled faces in the notches?? My kids used to make things like that with the chainsaw file on scraps of steatite and pipestone in my shop. I'm sure they threw them at a squirrel about 15 years ago! If I can find a scrap, I'll make a point with a dremel and take some pics.
  Cliff
Yeah, it’s both odd and suspicious isn’t it? I see some possible knapping/chipping around the tip. Presumaby the general shape was also achieved that way, although there is no edge work as such. But mostly it’s been ground in a way that looks completely illogical and doesn’t have any rational methodology. I wouldn’t like to say what it has been ground with, but it’s not like any authentic ancient workmanship I’ve ever seen. The tip is odd in itself… it looks like it has been made in the shape of a resharpened tip... as opposed to having actually been resharpened. Almost like someone was copying a shape they had seen, without any understanding of what that shape represented.
[Incidentally, Pam: when it was guaranteed to be authentic……. authentic what?]

[shartis]

When I was young me and my brother would make points that looked like that with a bench grinder, dremel tool and files.The tip would break off real easy on the bench grinder with some stones. We would use whatever was laying around the shop. Some of the scrape pieces of stuff like granite counter tops or trophy bases would look real similar to the one in question when put on a grinder. They would have that gritty, a little metallic look to it. We had a jeweler buffer but we could never get it to look like the stone was before we ground it.

[roustabout149]

Hey guys, thanks for all of your help.  The rock types mentioned are more indicative of what the rock type may actually be.  I still wonder why the complete rock is silver, without a trace of any other color, when held to the light, but appears to have no silver at all; as it appears below, when away from the light.  I love the material!  To me, it's worth not sending it back.
It was said to be a,"genuine arrowhead."  The seller offered a 7 day money back guarantee, with the buyer paying the return shipping cost.  It would cost me as much to return it as I paid for it!  Anyway, I want to keep it.
I have no clue what dremel tool marks look like.  I was looking at so many rocks today I can't see straight. :S It is rather suspicious, I guess?  I wish I knew what I were looking for so that I could see what the rest of you seem to already know.  I did email the seller informing them that the purchase I made was not genuine.  I also stated that we could all learn from this.  Don't believe anything you hear and only half of what you see!  Thanks again
Pam

[shartis]

I understand the silver look you see. It's hard to put into words others can understand but just my opinion and observations when the rock is ground on a grinder it my heat up enough to crystallize or change the particles somehow giving the stone a silver shine look in the light.