In a pit as large as the Dundas Quarry I quickly realised that finding any rocks of interest was going to be like looking for a needle in a hay-stack; that is unless you have a very knowledgeable rock-hounder with you!

Thankfully Reiner and Maggie were also visiting the quarry and they invited me to come along with them. Reiner has been coming to this mine for many, many years and it was wonderful to have him point out in the distance where a vein might exist. But, even with this help, the galena was pretty scarce this year. After visiting a couple of different locations in the mind we found a location that produced a small bag of pretty pure galena.

This wasn’t the only mineral we found. Maggie found some gypsum and Reiner found some marcasite (iron sulfide). There was also lots of sphalerite and celestite – in a greater quantity than the rest – and I’ll be experimenting with that once I’m back in the studio.

All these samples are wonderful, but it is really the galena that I’m most excited about. Now that I have a larger sample to work with I’ll have to get to work smelting!