Scheelite Distinguishing Characteristics:

The fluorescence may be confusing especially when it becomes whitish or yellow from molybdenum substitution, but the high gravity differentiates it from fluorescent fluorite, and the crystals are so common that they will often be seen.

Specimens from worldwide localities show little difference in their color of fluorescence. Unlike other minerals, Scheelite is a "self-activated" mineral. Its fluorescence is due to the mineral itself, rather than some chance chemical impurity. The characteristic blue to bluish white fluorescence of this species is a valuable property in prospecting for Scheelite deposits at night. Old mines have even been reopened when mine shafts were examined with ultraviolet lamps.

Scheelite crystals can be mistaken as octahedron crystals. So fluorite with it's perfect octahedral cleavage and fluorescence. Can be mistaken for the brownish orange Scheelite. Massive Scheelite has often been mistaken for massive quartz, but then the fluorescence of Scheelite is a dead giveaway. 

 

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Composition, Structure and Associated Minerals:

Scheelite is found in granite pegmatites, contact metamorphic deposits, and high temperature veins. In these veins, it occurs usually with quartz in crystalline rocks associated with cassiterite, topaz, fluorite, apatite, molybdenite, wolframite, and many other metallic compounds. Found at times with gold. As a contact metamorphic product in altered limestone intruded by granite it is associated with typical scarn minerals like garnet and epidote. It is probably in all cases deposited from hot solutions. Sometimes found as crystals, but usually occurs reniform, with a columnar structure; also massive and granular.

Identification and Diagnostics

Scheelite is distinguished from limestone, which its massive forms closely resemble, by its higher specific gravity and the absence of effervescence with HCl. From quartz it is distinguished by its softness and from barite by greater hardness and higher specific gravity. Nearly all scheelite fluoresces under short wave ultra violet light. This can make for a fast method of finding scheelite specimens.



 

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Occurrence, Localities and Origins:

Occurs in connection with the tin deposits of Bohemia, Saxony and Cornwall; in quantity in New South Wales and Queensland. Found in the United States at Trumbull, Connecticut; at the Atolia District near Randsburg, San Bernardino County, California; near Mill City Pershing County, Nevada; near Dragoon, Cohise County, Arizona; in Lake County, Colorado; near Gage, New Mexico, where it occurs with pyrite and galena in a vein cutting limestone, and in the placer gravels at Nome, Alaska. High perfection orange scheelite crystals suitable for mineral collectors are being mined in China.

Production. Scheelite has been mined in quantity in Idaho, Alaska, California, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico, as a source of tungsten, but most of this element has heretofore been produced from other compounds, mainly wolframite. For some years it was produced in large quantity near Bishop, Inyo Co., California.

Scheelite is a subordinate ore of tungsten, with wolframite furnishing the greater amount on a worldwide basis. In the US, Scheelite has been the more important source of the metal. Tungsten is used principally in the manufacture of tool steel, various steel alloys and electric furnaces. It is also employed as the filaments in electric-light bulbs, in the manufacture of sodium tungstate which is used for fireproofing cloth, as a mordant in dyeing, and for a number of other minor purposes.

 

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