deepsouth
fully equipped rock polisher
He who rocks last rocks best
Member since January 2004
Posts: 1,256
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Post by deepsouth on Oct 12, 2004 5:22:22 GMT -5
Hi Puppies, you must have the same abnormality that I have, pick up ---pick up----pick up--- On a fieldtrip I go with the intention to pick up only one or two types of rock( on advice of other clubmembers) and end up picking anything that looks pretty haha. And a lotarocks DO look pretty as you well know. So here I am having bags and buckets filled to the brim with rocks and not enough tumblers to process them all . And like hospitals , the waiting list is growing ever longer. But oh , once the tumbling of a new batch starts it is nice to get surprises. Like someone wrote before, those rocks have been waiting for us for millions of years. So to be on the waiting list now is not so bad...it's progress And getting to know all the rocks at once is as impossible as walking instantly once we are born. But over time , we get to know more and more so don't despair, you will get there. Jack Have fun
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Post by puppie96 on Oct 13, 2004 3:13:21 GMT -5
Jack, thank you for your encouragement. You are describing the exact thing that's happened to me. The amazing thing is that I have actually gotten "organized" about this, which is not true of anything else in my life. Wow, I just realized this for the first time! But anyhow, I've been going to sites locally and while on a driving trip west, picking up all this stuff and keeping it carefully sorted by locale rather than by type of rock. Then I put it all in the tumblers and Que Sera, Sera. The only exception to this rule is that I collected a bunch of obsidian and had no question about what it was, so I have kept it as a batch to itself as the instruction books say.
Rollingstone, since I am a dumbhead, you are entitled to be a snothead at will, in my case. And I have a habit of posting all my dumbhead stuff because that's what I need help with. At least maybe, that isn't too dumb. But anyhoo, my prob with all this busting stuff up is that I am clueless. I took a chisel and tried it way back in the year one and was just amazed that this rock didn't just roll over for me! That's how much a dumbhead I am. I admired the sparks that flew from my hammer smashes and the holes it made in the towel I wrapped it in. I've blocked out the part pertaining to bad things happening to fingers holding the chisel. In short, I'm a bit challenged. Any and all direction is appreciated.
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Post by Cher on Oct 13, 2004 11:04:15 GMT -5
Awww Puppie, you're not a dumbhead, and there's no such thing as a stupid question ... except the one that isn't asked.
Don't feel alone, I got the smashing rocks down really good but when it comes to using a chisel it just doesn't work for me. I've tried it several times but I've yet to have a rock just break where I had the chisel. But then, maybe I'm too worried about saving my fingers and don't really give it a good whack. I've become kind of attached to them and would like to keep them in working order.
Cher
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Post by puppie96 on Oct 14, 2004 0:16:59 GMT -5
Hey Cher, I actually did use a chisel recently. There was this rock tumbling around that had this annoying fracture right through the middle. Crack big enough to drive a Mack truck through. So I said to myself, pup, looks like a job for a chisel, so I got that chisel and set it on that crack and rat-a-tat-tat there were 2 half rocks lying there like little dumplings. I thought this was a good thing, now I'm getting that rock busting thing worked out.
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sweetiehound
starting to shine!
Member since June 2004
Posts: 36
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Post by sweetiehound on Oct 14, 2004 19:51:13 GMT -5
Its just like hitting a baseball. Keep your eye on the target and whack, whack, whack! I know I must look like a crazy person in the yard hammering on rocks in my swim goggles.
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Post by connrock on Oct 14, 2004 20:40:06 GMT -5
Puppie,,, If you take a squirt bottle of water and wet the rocks you find in the field it will help you to see what they will look like when polished. I know this won't help you ID them but it will help to see if they are Leaverites or not. Tom
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Post by cookie3rocks on Oct 14, 2004 20:59:57 GMT -5
Emerald suggested I use an ice pick to crack smaller stones that were still too big to tumble, but, of course, I had to put my dumdum twist to it. I positioned the ice pick on the stone and couldn't get it to hold still when I whacked it. So I used my feet to hold it in place. Barefoot. Can you say "DUUUH"! Punched a hole in one of my toes. My step daughter came out to see what I was doing and saw my bleeding toe (I was trying to ignore it) *gasp* Are you OK? Yeah, I cut my toe. Did you say a bad word? Yeah. Will you be allright? yeah, I'm OK. I'll tell Dad you cut your toe. OK. Speaks for it's self, doesn't it?
cookie
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Post by puppie96 on Oct 15, 2004 3:43:16 GMT -5
Cookster, all I care about here is that you had on your goggles. Holes in toes are fixable.
Yes, I have always worn my eye protection. The hand/finger thing is sort of central for me, since I damaged my left hand badly in a freak accident in August 2000, basically by falling on it in a weird position, leaving me with a permanent partial disability. Since I'm righthanded holding the chisel in the left hand, it takes great bravery to do the chisel bit at all.
My big worry is that I'll mess up a good rock by doing something like breaking it up. I keep looking at all these pictures of agates at various websites, and it's obvious that you have to use a lot of judgment about how deeply to grind one of these stones; if you always go for smoothness you'll lose a lot of the defining features. I'm especially aware of this since we seem to have some pretty decent agates scattered among the rest in our backyard rock. I've taken some of these too far and I know that some truly beautiful features were ground off because I was going for smoothness. You live and learn.
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agatenut
starting to spend too much on rocks
Member since August 2004
Posts: 127
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Post by agatenut on Oct 15, 2004 6:17:01 GMT -5
FINALLY!
Thank you puppie! I was wondering why, after all these months of polishing fantastic agates found in the field, they would turn out so dull. I mean, where did all those beautiful features and colors go? The agates here usually come attached to a cement like sandy matrix. I usually leave my agates in 9 % vinegar to dissolve this matrix. I started thinking recenty that perhaps the vinegar had something to do with destroying the colors of the agate. I guess I have to be more careful about how long to leave them on 60/90 or perhaps just skip that stage altogether. I've also heard that some Lake Superior agates are worth more unpolished. How come? Is it because they may lose their color?
Ralph
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Post by puppie96 on Oct 17, 2004 1:33:24 GMT -5
Ralph, FINALLY backatcha! I've just been reading everything I can find on the net about agate, looking at pictures of different types, advice on picking it up in the field, etc. One thing that you see all the time is that there's a big difference of opinion about the value of agate in its raw state as opposed to polishing it or otherwise altering it. There's certainly a lot of opinion that you may be best off to leave them untouched. Also, there's plenty of advice cautioning you that if you grind at them, you may well lose the color/patterns which may be only on the surface. I've now done this several times with nice backyard agates. I'm absolutely certain that I was polishing off the pretty stuff like erasing a chalkboard. Now I'm a lot more careful, but it really calls for a lot of judgment. I wish more of our seniors on this board would talk about this!
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Post by Cher on Oct 17, 2004 11:20:08 GMT -5
Hey Ralph, do you have / or can you take some before and after pictures? I'm curious about this "matrix" your talking about.
Cher
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agatenut
starting to spend too much on rocks
Member since August 2004
Posts: 127
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Post by agatenut on Oct 17, 2004 14:11:41 GMT -5
Thanks for the info, puppie . I'll try and get some pictures posted, Cher. In fact I recently took some "before" pictures of some agates i found just for this purpose. I'm now waiting for the rocks to come out for the "after" shot. Along the way, I already see their colors disappearing. The gravel the agates are found in comes from a conglomerate formation. The gravels are normally all stuck together in this sandy cement. The loose gravels usually still have some of this white stuff crusted on them. The cement is calcium carbonate (like limestone) and reacts with acid. ralph
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Post by puppie96 on Oct 18, 2004 2:44:34 GMT -5
Ralph, this sounds like some that I have, too. I have a few that are really dramatic -- the clear part is sort of embedded in stuff that looks like concrete.
Many of the pictures of agates on various websites show them in matrix, perhaps most.
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