It consists of a very dense matrix with a irregular, mostly very loose, scatter of quartz grains the size of fine to coarse sand. The matrix itself is very inhomogeneous and shows very frequent veins, schliers, burrows and patches of a different structure.
Fresh fractures are mostly matte but can have a slightly silky lustre on the finer parts.
The quartz grains are mostly visible as glittering dots or patches and are easily recognizable using a magnifying glass. In some very fine varieties however, it can be necessary to use a magnification of 20 times or more to see them. Most typical seems to be a cortex of a few millimeters consisting of quartzitic, fine-grained sandstone that grades into the quartzite. In archaeological samples, apart from those in the immediate surroundings of the deposits with workshop character, pieces with cortex are very rare. In plane polarized light, the picture on the left hand side, you can see a structure in the lower right hand side that is very probably an animal burrow and in the top left corner a very inhomogeneous patch with a concentration of quartz grains.