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Roll Overs:
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769 grams. Pallasite, PMG
TKW 823 kg. Observed fall: no. The first pieces (20kg and 80kg) were found in 1807 by farmers of Kaporenki, a village in the district of Bragin, currently in Belarus.
Jürgen / jnmczurich writes:
A Brahin slice was bought in Tucson 2009. About three years ago the buyer of the Brahin slice gave me a call that he has "major problems" with his heavily corroded Brahin slice. It was stored in his (wet?) cellar for years and almost forgotten. He sent the slice to me with the little hope that I can refresh it and a make real beauty out of the damaged slice. After receiving the Brahin slice it looked terrible. Many Olivines were broken out, the slice was full of corrosion cracks, irreversibly bad condition. All I could tell him was "dig a deep hole, bury it and forget the Brahin slice". He was really sad but he understood and presented it to me. I was thinking what to do with it and started to break off the most terrible parts of the slice to save some stable rest of the slice. Almost nothing left. Following that, my idea was to separate the olivines and the Fe/Ni metal by mechanical work and with the help of a strong magnet, too.
With two gas-pipe tongs I destroyed the broken parts of the slice to smaller and smaller metal skeleton fragments to obtain as many olivine grains as possible. After the heavy mechanical work was done I used an Achate mortar and a strong magnet to separate the olivine from the adhering metal parts and metal veins. For some reason I finished this work not 3 years ago but recently.
The results are as follows:
Former weight of the Brahin slice including broken parts found in the parcel: 769 g
The almost olivine-free metal skeletons/fragments: 395 g
Fine grained separated olivine fragments, grain size ranging 0.5 to 2 mm: 279.5 g
Fine grained metal-rich dust, metal particles, metal grains up to 1 mm: 67 g
Two saved solid stable pallasite portions "to keep the best of a bad job": 22.5 g
Material loss during mechanical preparation: 5 g
Any ideas what to do with the separated Brahin olivine and the almost olivine-free metal skeletons? I would like to donate some for scientific applications. I am waiting for all of your comments. Thanks in advance. |
Click to view larger photos
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Found at the arrow (green or red) on the map below
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MexicoDoug
9/2/2016 11:42:05 AM |
I have no good idea who you can give them too for research. I would add the iron to the soil of my tomato plants and eat the fruits of this meteorite. Tool names are interesting around the world and I enjoyed this last picture. The two styles of "parrot-tongs" you call "gas pipe tongs" are, at least fr the orange handle one, tongue and grove type pliers, invented in 1931 and widely called water pump pliers here in the US. The green is a variant of this design and I bet more common in northern Europe, though neither likely considered tongs here. Being rusting meteorites, it is nice though, to use gas, and not water kind of adjustable pliers ;-) Thank you for the interesting story and R.I.P Bragin in its eventual donation resting place |
Rob Matson
9/2/2016 12:10:38 AM |
Purchasing a Brahin is like purchasing an old bottle of Cabernet: in general you will not know how it was stored/prepared, so you really have no idea how it will "age". Maybe you'll get lucky; other times, not so much. With some irons and pallasites your odds are better than 50-50 (e.g. Esquel, Gibeon); unfortunately, Brahin is not one of those cases. |
Anne Black
9/1/2016 7:36:23 PM |
I know well that problem Jurgen. I have here a slice of Admire that was handed to me by one of my long time customers, a veteran collector with a large collection, who asked me if anything could be done about it. No, nothing, it is in pieces and badly rusted. He told me that he had bought it one year prior from a known dealer, the label was still in the Riker, and had supposedly been stabilized. I have kept it as a "Show and Tell" piece to help me explain how important it is to choose your specimens, and dealers, very carefully. As for other pallasites, I have been lucky with Brahin, but not with Brenham. |
John Divelbiss
9/1/2016 6:24:56 PM |
I've had Brahin two slices with one of them falling apart, and the another still in perfect shape after 12 years. I know with the second slice the provider said the Brahin material used for the slice was stabilized and that the slice should not rust and it hasn't. Whether the stabilization was done with ion treatment equipment, or bathed in ethylene glycol and then baked off...the treatment used worked for it. I've had luck with EG with other rusters. My luck with Brenham slices purchased has not been good. |
Tracy Latimer
9/1/2016 12:58:55 PM |
I don't know about the iron skeletal remains, but there seems to be a market on ebay for the olivine fragments. I have (somewhere) a bottle of pallasite cuttings, which I hope to incorporate into dice someday. |
Bernd Pauli
9/1/2016 10:43:31 AM |
Yep, Graham, Admire is another ruster. But my 195 gr Brenham slice has been stable for about 30 years now! |
Graham
9/1/2016 5:00:07 AM |
A familiar story...I have similar stories with Brenham and Admire...some of the most beautiful meteorites but it pays to research well which to buy. |
Bernd Pauli
9/1/2016 4:06:31 AM |
A truly sad story but we all know how easily Brahins can deteriorate with nothing left but rusty FeNi-metal, rust and olivines. |
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