Silica-hematite particles are grafted with polyisobutene to obtain stable, discrete, uncharged prolates dispersed in a nonaqueous solvent, starting from an improved version of the procedure used by Matijevic and co-workers for the synthesis of hematite spindles and their coating with silica. It turns out that the silica layer must be at least 30-nm thick to screen the Van der Waals’ attraction between the hematite cores to a degree that is sufficient to obtain stable prolates. Sedimentation experiments with the uncharged prolates agree with Perrin and Herzog’s classical result for the translational friction factor of a prolate. Deviations from this result are partly ascribed to the peculiar "light-induced convection" due to the light absorption of the hematite cores. Liquid permeation of a packing of uncoated hematite spindles can be described with the Kozeny-Carman scaling relation and does not differ fundamentally from the case of spheres. The packing densities of spindles, however, are clearly lower than those of spheres and seem to be a unique function of the spindle aspect ratio.