new micromineral forum
Phil stopped by and sent me an email about his new micromineral forum. Its in french but he does have an english section to his forum- although the sign-up page is in french 
Here is his loosely translated article on his forum. If micro minerals is your hobby, check it out and knowing a bit of french would also help…
My name is Philippe Saget from Brittany (in France), 55 years old. I am applied geologist in oceanography at Ifremer (http://www.ifremer.fr). I am currently working on the polymetallic nodules – the ´†futur†eldorado†ª†!!!
After collecting macro-minerals, I was living in a flat on the third floor without elevator. I had the main mineral categories (fluorite, galena, pyrite…) but impossible to make evolve my collection. Moreover, the search for beautiful samples in Brittany and France in general being done very rare, I thus chose the micro-mineral collection.
After a few years of solitary research, I was at the origin of the creation of an association of micromounters in 1983: the French association of micromineralogy. With Pierre Gatel (“Les micromontures”), Bertrand Duriez and some other guys, we wanted to gather all those which sought, like us, of micro-minerals in order to help them in this new speciality.
The micromineralogy opens the door with another field to you, another dimension.
When you look through your binocular you are filled with wonder by the beauty of the crystals with their form and their color, their mineralogical associations.
With this scale, the minerals are perfect: here not of broken crystals, not of notched edges.
We who live the “old continent”, the search on the ground for micro-minerals is much easier because one can almost find some everywhere (whereas the macro samples… they are in the museums!).
The micromineralogy gives you the possibility of finding species which you could never meet in macroscopy. From the 500 macro species, we pass to more than 4000!!!
In an economic way, you find with the purchase of microminerals from 1 US$, the scarcities being able to go up to 50 US$ but you will never find them visible with the eye-naked for this price there!
I said to you in the introduction that I lived in a flat. With micro-minerals, no more problem of place. You can arrange some 1000 samples in a shoes box; no more dust on your okenite tufts.
So, the micromineralogy is a hobby with a future because the quarries, the mines, the private ores are closing themself with the amateurs of “large” stones. Now, it should be changed dimension if one wants to continue to seek minerals.
This speciality requires an investment with binocular and a trimer and later a numerical camera to take your lucky finds and to divide them with others on Internet.
By using your computer, you will find thousands of mineral photographs there with their localities (MINDAT†: http://www.mindat.org). All the associative structures have now their own Web site and you can easily make contact to have new ideas. forums of discussion (http://www.micromineral-forum.com) enable you to put your common or specialized questions.
Now, I am the webmaster of the micromineral forum (http://www.micromineral-forum.com) and co-webmaster on inet)mineral (http://www.inet-mineral.com).
In short, I incite you to come to join us you will discover a new mineral world.
Philweb
