THE PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF ILMENITE:

Color is black.
Luster is metallic, submetallic to dull when tarnished.
Transparency: Crystals are opaque.
Crystal System: Trigonal; bar 3
Crystal Habits include thin and thick tabular crystals with rhombohedral truncations (similar to hematite's tabular habits); sometimes formed into rosettes. Also granular and massive. Occurs as grains in placer sands.
Cleavage is absent.
Fracture is conchoidal or uneven.
Hardness is 5 - 6
Specific Gravity is 4.5 - 5.0 (average for metallic minerals).
Streak is brownish black.
Other Characteristics: Sometimes magnetic (will always become magnetic if heated) and there is basal and rhombohedral parting.

Associated Minerals include zircon, hematite, magnetite, rutile, spinel, analcime, albite, apatite, monazite, calcite, natrolite, microcline, olivine, pyrrhotite, biotitenepheline and quartz.

Notable Occurrences are wide spread and include the type locality from where it gets its name, Ilmen Lake in the Ilmen Mountains, Miask in the Southern portions of the Ural Mountain Chain, Russia as well as Sweden; Germany; Froland, Arendal and Kragero, Norway; Gilgit, Pakistan; Allard Lake and Mont Saint-Hilaire, Quebec and Bancroft, Ontario, Canada; Finland; the Eastern Shores of Australia and Brazil, Sri Lanka, China, Thailand, South Africa, India, Malaysia, Sierra Leone and in Orange County and Essex County, New York; Iron Mountain, Wyoming; Chester, Massachusetts; several sites in California and along the eastern seaboard of the United States.Best Field Indicators are crystal habit, density, lack of cleavage, luster, associations and streak.