My coming across the graphite was purely a coincidence. I had set out to Newburn Haugh (a large area of low lying land in a large loop of the River Tyne- in fact "haugh" is old Anglo Saxon meaning flat or marshy land near a river) to explore the old Stella Power station site which was nearby the graphite works. After satisfying my curiosity at the Power station site I followed the river edge to the graphite works site (I didn't know it had been a graphite works at the time).
It was not long before I figured it out as there were numerous chunks of graphite simply lying around, generally of the size I enclosed, but some larger and some molded into shapes like screws and hollow cylinders. There were also large electrode pieces with a shiny, glassy finish - these don't leave a mark on paper.
After several trips I collected around 20kg of the material in total, why? I don't really know I just liked the look of them! Since then (1998/99) the site has been prepared for a large new Business Park and I imagine many other pieces of the graphite probably ended up in the in fill or crushed.

The large tipless carbon is a bulb made in the late teens [1910's] as the carbon was nearly at the end of its life cycle and having reached its greatest efficiency point before being replaced forever by tungsten. This was the "improved" carbon or "metalized" carbon which was a graphite paste baked over the carbon core.

Copper graphite, This sells well on ebay, think this is used for motor brushes, about the strangest stuff I have ever seen, you'll have NO trouble convincing people it is some weird Roswell metal. Interesting thing you can do with it is cut out a narrowish bar of it place in a "quarter shrinker" and once zapped with enough juice makes about the most tough material i have EVER, come across! It is like something out of science fiction after that treatment. It can be pounded and beaten on an anvil like wrought iron when hot, but good tool steel, tungsten carbide drills, lasers, ceramic lathe bits and other means of parting it don't cut it until it is heated enough to almost melt/burn! Silicon carbide cut off wheels will grind is slooooly though.

I do have one small correction for you though on your carbon page. You mention that carbon fiber is used in the construction of high pressure gas cylinders used for scuba diving. That is partially true - they do construct fiber-wrapped high pressure gas cylinders, but we don't use them for scuba diving. I have several small (68 cubic inch, 3000PSI) tanks that I attach to my paintball gun, because they are very, very light. Firefighters also use fiber-wrapped SCBA (Self Contained Breathing Apparatus) tanks due to their lightweight. And that is exactly why divers do not use them. The tanks are too light for diving. The materials they are made out of do not give the cylinder enough negative buoyancy to offset the buoyancy created by it's water displacement. You would have to wear a huge amount of lead to offset the natural buoyancy of the tank. We don't even really like aluminum tanks - the little 80 cubic foot aluminum tanks are kind of looked down upon by us "serious" divers, as they have poor buoyancy characteristics - they just get too light underwater. We do use aluminum cylinders to carry additional gases with us when doing decompression diving, but for the most part we use good, heavy low pressure (2400/2650 PSI) steel 104 cubic foot tanks (or other capacity).

Hawaiian Precious 'Pink Beauty' Coral

Precious coral has been for centuries prized by the people in Japan-third in value after gold and silver-because of its fine dense quality, its exquisite colors, and because it always has been associated with 'good luck,' and for several hundred years, expert craftsmen in several coral centers of Japan have been fashioning such precious coral of various shades and colors into fine pieces of jewelry-ornaments for Obi Clasps, kanzashi (ornamental hair pins), and more recently into rings, pendants, necklaces, and brooches This precious coral is completely different from black coral. Whereas black coral is merely an organic compound, precious coral is a calcium carbonate crystal commonly known as calcite, and is composed of hard skeletons of certain marine organism and grows very slowly, possibly at a rate of approximately one inch every 200 years, and in Hawaii occurs in colors from a salmon red, dark pink, pink, pale pink to snow white. 'Angel Skin' is the term commonly applied to the dark pink and medium pink shades.

The precious coral you have in your hand is a representation from only several hundred pounds of which were harvested from a depth of 1200 to 1500 feet (the length of 4 to 5 football fields) in the Molokai Channel, only a 'stones throw' from the Makapuu Lighthouse on the island of Oahu and is therefore genuinely Hawwaiin. The 'ground' which was discovered by University of Hawaii scientists in the fall of 1966 is so far the only known production area in the island chain, and several attempts to locate other grounds in the waters of the Hawaiian Islands have been unsuccessful. Precious Coral-the prefect gift and souvenir of Hawaii-from Hawaii-buff it, polish it, fashion it into jewelry of your own design, or just save it as a memento of your prefect Hawaii vacation.