RockHoundry
The Journal
How to Identify a Mineral in the Field: A Beginner's Testing Method
A step-by-step field identification routine — color, streak, luster, hardness, cleavage, and specific gravity — for narrowing down an unlabeled specimen without a lab.
The Mohs Hardness Scale Explained: The Ten Reference Minerals
What the Mohs scale actually measures, why it's ordinal rather than linear, and how the ten index minerals from talc to diamond translate to a field scratch-test kit.
Specific Gravity Testing at Home: The Hydrostatic Weighing Method
How to measure a mineral specimen's specific gravity with a kitchen scale, a container of water, and a length of thread — and what the resulting number actually tells you.
The Seven Crystal Systems: A Rockhound's Guide to Crystal Symmetry
A plain-language walkthrough of the seven crystal systems — cubic through triclinic — what actually defines each one, and how to recognize the difference between system and habit.
Rock Tumbling for Beginners: Grit Stages Explained
Why rock tumbling uses four separate grit stages instead of one, what each stage actually does, and how to avoid the most common first-batch mistakes.
UV Lamps for Rockhounding: What Longwave and Shortwave Actually Show You
Why some minerals glow under ultraviolet light, the practical difference between longwave and shortwave lamps, and how to run a fluorescence test properly.
Building a Rockhounding Field Kit: What to Actually Bring
A practical rockhounding field kit — from a rock hammer and hand lens to a field notebook and safety gear — built around what actually gets used, not what looks good on a shelf.
How to Use the Mohs Hardness Scale Properly (And Why It Isn't Linear)
A worked walkthrough of bracketing a specimen's hardness with real scratch-test numbers, why the Mohs scale is ordinal rather than linear, and the mistakes that quietly wreck a scratch test.
Specific Gravity as a Field Diagnostic: Reading Density Right
Three worked specific gravity examples — a quartz-density, a pyrite-density, and a galena-density specimen — and how to read the resulting number as a real diagnostic rather than a curiosity.
The Seven Crystal Systems and the Habit of Reading Them
Six real unit-cell examples run through the crystal system identifier, one system at a time, plus the field habit clues that let you guess a system before you've measured a single angle.
Estimating a Specimen's Weight From Its Dimensions Before It Ever Touches a Scale
How the specimen weight calculator's ellipsoid-and-packing-factor model works, three worked examples showing why density matters more than size, and what the packing factor is really compensating for.
The Tumbling Grit Progression, and Why Skipping a Stage Ruins a Batch
Four real tumbling schedules run through the grit calculator — soft vs. hard material, rotary vs. vibratory — plus the dust-safety habits that belong alongside every stage.