OregonBorn
noticing nice landscape pebbles
Member since September 2015
Posts: 86
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Post by OregonBorn on Jul 1, 2018 16:49:40 GMT -5
Well, I can get a .032 MK Diamond branded blade for $1.38 more on Amazon with free shipping. But is an .032 enough kerf? Never heard of a good blade going for so cheap.....(just saying)..They usually average around $38.00 - $70.00... I use the thinnest blade out there on my trim saw, its working great, but all I do is shape stones for cabbing.. If I could get MK Diamond blades for $1.38 each, I would buy 100 of them and sell them myself.
I posted that the Amazon blade would be $1.38 more (keyword here is MORE) than the generic Korean blade that Rockoonz posted. For clarity, that Korean blade is a generic .032 8" Diamond 303 and is $42 on Ebay with shipping. The Amazon blade is a .032 8" MK Diamond label 303 and is $43.38 with shipping. All of a buck thirty eight more.
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OregonBorn
noticing nice landscape pebbles
Member since September 2015
Posts: 86
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Post by OregonBorn on Jul 1, 2018 1:08:14 GMT -5
Well, I can get a .032 MK Diamond branded blade for $1.38 more on Amazon with free shipping. But is an .032 enough kerf?
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OregonBorn
noticing nice landscape pebbles
Member since September 2015
Posts: 86
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Post by OregonBorn on Jul 1, 2018 0:40:03 GMT -5
So an older fully customized Lortone 8 inch lap saw followed me home from a rock sale a couple months ago. I cleaned it all up. They were using antifreeze as a coolant, which I have replaced with a blend of mineral and baby oil. It has an MK 301 blade on it now, but that tends to give me some ridging on slabs and small eggs that I cut using it. I want a flatter 303 blade. But the question is, do I get the .025, or the .032 blade for it? Or even an .040? I do mostly trimming of slabs using it (the 301 works fine for that) but I want to get smoother cuts 'slabbing' and splitting small eggs, smaller jasper and agate pieces 3 inches and smaller for making into cabs and jewelry. I realize that the kerf takes out more rock, but I want something that will last and take some punishment from a non auto-feed rail vice (meaning my wrist) for slabbing and splitting, as well as cut and trim out slabs for grinding. I typically cut pet wood, jasper, agate, and some jade, and a lot of obsidian. Price does not seem to vary much with kerf until you get to .050, and they are about $45 on Amazon with a 5/8 center.
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OregonBorn
noticing nice landscape pebbles
Member since September 2015
Posts: 86
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Post by OregonBorn on Sept 22, 2016 14:59:14 GMT -5
Amusing also that the FBI came out this week and is advising that everyone cover their webcams with tape. I also found this on the web today. Seems that internet apps and security/privacy issues are going places I never dreamed of. www.markeoopsch.com/story/bad-vibrations-your-sex-toy-may-be-collecting-information-about-you-2016-09-20I mean, really? Actually I never had a clue as to where the internet would go from where it was back in the 1980s. Or even the 90s. As for Google, I lived in the Silly Valley for 12 years. I have been to the Googleplex (what was the SGI campus in Palo Alto) and eaten at several of the lavish Google "cafeterias"/restaurants. Good food. Insane benefits there. Though we actually had better benefits at General Dynamics in Sandy Eggo in the 1980s. At GD we has 100% medical and dental coverage for any doctor anywhere in the world, a company retirement benefit plan, as well as a 401-k matching plan. We had 12 paid holidays a year, and 21 paid sick days a year. My master's degree courses at UCSD were paid for 100% by the company, including text books and parking fees. We also had lots of company and gov't paid for lunches, parties and events, usually one a week, as well as tix to football and baseball games, and local theme park tix. Per diem and travel expenses there as paid for in advance for all company trips. We were paid salary for a 40 hour week, which was actually a 40 hour week. I was also approved for overtime, for which I was paid a straight hourly scale, but I was later paid for the added half time. That was during the RayGun days before the military contractor meltdown on the early to mid 1990s. You url has an embedded curse word. Have a look market watch (one word) is a curse word here? Give me a f'ing break. Maybe I should move on to a less restrictive forum? I mean, really? TWA*T? I can see why some of the content in that link would be objectionable, but the link to a respectable site like Market Watch... I give up. Draconian censorship has gone amuk here.
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OregonBorn
noticing nice landscape pebbles
Member since September 2015
Posts: 86
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Post by OregonBorn on Sept 22, 2016 14:42:52 GMT -5
As for your time in Sandy Eggo, my dad worked at GD from 1955 to 1994. 39 years, you may have known him! He was mostly at the Kearny Mesa plant, but did move around and work for them at several different locations over those many years.
They had everything you mentioned, great benefits, etc. A lot of the big companies in those long forgotten days actually cared about their employees. They did a lot of things for those employees and their families. Remember going to the Missile Park often as a child, great memories. Only wish I was into rocks way back when, I understand they had quite the lapidary setup. So did Rohr. Field trips... It was a different era. Jean
I was in San Diego and at GD until 1993. I went to SDSU and UCSD. The only job I had in San Diego was at GD. It was certainly a different era and company that cared about its employees. I would probably still be there if the defense spending had not vaporized. Best management I ever worked for was there. I mostly worked in Kerney Mesa for GDE: the electronics division. I also spent time at a secure facility in Rancho Bernardo. I was also loaned out to work at Space Systems and Data Systems. I lived in Del Cerro. Yes, Missile Park. I took my niece and nephew there to ride the train. They loved it. I left GD after I had a 3 year contract with the Japanese in hand to develop the F-16/J fighter jet, and then Mitsubishi Heavy Industry arrived one day and completely cancelled the program. I had an offer at another defense contractor in the SF Bay area to work on the NAVAIR proposal, so I headed north. I collected rocks when I lived there, but mostly small amounts of tourmaline up around the Alpine area after a friend showed me his collection of the stuff that he had collected up there. I collected some rocks while off-roading in Anza Borrego. I also collected silver coins when the beaches were carried away by the large storm swells there one winter. I never thought to look in Ramona or Oceanside for rocks. I never go into lapidary at GD either. I wish I had that job there now! Job security and at a people company.
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OregonBorn
noticing nice landscape pebbles
Member since September 2015
Posts: 86
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Post by OregonBorn on Sept 20, 2016 15:02:10 GMT -5
Amusing also that the FBI came out this week and is advising that everyone cover their webcams with tape. I also found this on the web today. Seems that internet apps and security/privacy issues are going places I never dreamed of. www.markeoopsch.com/story/bad-vibrations-your-sex-toy-may-be-collecting-information-about-you-2016-09-20I mean, really? Actually I never had a clue as to where the internet would go from where it was back in the 1980s. Or even the 90s. As for Google, I lived in the Silly Valley for 12 years. I have been to the Googleplex (what was the SGI campus in Palo Alto) and eaten at several of the lavish Google "cafeterias"/restaurants. Good food. Insane benefits there. Though we actually had better benefits at General Dynamics in Sandy Eggo in the 1980s. At GD we has 100% medical and dental coverage for any doctor anywhere in the world, a company retirement benefit plan, as well as a 401-k matching plan. We had 12 paid holidays a year, and 21 paid sick days a year. My master's degree courses at UCSD were paid for 100% by the company, including text books and parking fees. We also had lots of company and gov't paid for lunches, parties and events, usually one a week, as well as tix to football and baseball games, and local theme park tix. Per diem and travel expenses there as paid for in advance for all company trips. We were paid salary for a 40 hour week, which was actually a 40 hour week. I was also approved for overtime, for which I was paid a straight hourly scale, but I was later paid for the added half time. That was during the RayGun days before the military contractor meltdown on the early to mid 1990s.
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OregonBorn
noticing nice landscape pebbles
Member since September 2015
Posts: 86
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Post by OregonBorn on Sept 20, 2016 15:00:11 GMT -5
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OregonBorn
noticing nice landscape pebbles
Member since September 2015
Posts: 86
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Post by OregonBorn on Sept 7, 2016 15:36:43 GMT -5
Most forums just let you upload photos... I do not understand these forums that make you put photos someplace else on the web and then reference them. The problem with that is that links change over time, or the photos are removed form other sites, and thus they will vaporize here as well.
As for privacy on the internet, there is none. Assume that everything that you post, send or email on the web is being hacked by the Russians, the Chinese, by private companies worldwide, by web crawlers, by hackers in South Asia and Eastern Europe, and by various US and foreign national agencies who store everything sent on the web in massive storage facilities like the ones in Utah. No, I am not paranoid. I am a computer design engineer by trade, as well as a materials scientist. I specialized in large to massive scale silicon (and other substrate) chip design in my engineering career. I also once supported the NSA as a technical support engineer in the 80s and 90s when I worked for various defense contractors. There is simply no such thing as privacy online. Even if you encrypt things. Too easy to crack now with the large scale computer systems. As are passwords. I long for the old Darpa days when the internet was just for us engineers and scientists. Now its all social media, porn and advertising.
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OregonBorn
noticing nice landscape pebbles
Member since September 2015
Posts: 86
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Post by OregonBorn on Sept 6, 2016 23:36:47 GMT -5
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OregonBorn
noticing nice landscape pebbles
Member since September 2015
Posts: 86
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Post by OregonBorn on Sept 6, 2016 23:15:27 GMT -5
Call it what you will. I have been asking around about this 'Flower stone/Chinese Writing rock/Dallasite" stuff, and I have been finding more of it the more I look. Lars Johnson has several photos of it in his newer Rockhounding Oregon book. One is of the Grande Ronde River south photo on page 126, and another from the Grande Ronde River north on page 144. They are quite distinct, though they show the same type of variation as official "Dallasite." So IMHO this stuff can be found in a far wider region that I previously thought. The Grande Ronde River is in the far NE corner of Oregon and SE Washington. Also note that the stuff I find here is highly variable in color, patterns, and varies from super hard highly polishable jasper to really soft stuff that flakes off or disappears in the tumbler. Not unlike most jaspers here in Oregon; Owyhee and Biggs have soft porous variants as well as super hard stuff. Jaspers as a rule are not all the same, even collected in the exact same area.
If I can figure it out, I will post a photo here of a bucket full of what I believe is the same species of rock as "Dallasite" that I pulled out of a riverbed in Southern Washington this summer. It polishes up nicely (see the three rocks in the middle).
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OregonBorn
noticing nice landscape pebbles
Member since September 2015
Posts: 86
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Post by OregonBorn on Aug 14, 2016 16:18:31 GMT -5
Dallasite has a wide variety of display qualities, as it is a breccia stone. Some types have small composite material, some large. I have a wild variety in the ones that I have. Mine are in the polisher now, so I cannot snap a photo and post it here. There are photos of larger chunk Dallasite material posted here on ProBoards, and other wild BC cab photos posted online here: bcrockhound.com/tag/dallasite/Do a Dallasite image search using Google, and then do a Chinese Writing Rock search. They overlap and you will see a vast array of variety in the stones. Yeah, Stewart is a beloved member er here. My gut feeling is this stone may have similar chemistry but the name "Dallasite" is a locality based moniker. And we can diagnose the locality by seeing the stones. While the stones in this thread are from shores of the same continent, they aren't from the Dallasite shorelines. Same as a rosy boa from whitewater canyon is diagnosable as from that canyon. There are rosy boas from all over the southwest that are genetically similar. They are not all the same. Pictures offered as evidence if needed. I admit my imperfection and am simply reporting my gut. Well, I have been all over Vancouver Island, and I have lived up and down the west coast of NA for most of my life (from Campbell River to Puerto Vallarta). While Dallasite may be attributed to VI, I have found several areas on the mainland with the same rocks in the west slopes of the Cascades. The variation is vast in these rocks, even on VI. I have a large collection of the stuff, mostly from Washington and mainland BC. If you understand the geology of the western PNW, we were (and are still being) rammed by the forces of the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate with a series of islands being shoved in from the Pacific, VI being another one. So my bet is that they are rocks formed long ago eroded out and tumbled by river flows and winding up on the floor of the Pacific, and later uplifted onto what has become the western PNW (mainland and islands). My read and observations anyway. These rocks have become my new point of focus for my collecting. The more I look, the more variation I find. I never thought much of them before, as there are so many around here. Again, the variation in them is vast. Call them flower stones, Chinese writing rock, or Dallasite. All the same, yet all very unique. The OP has a rather nice example of a very "noisy" rock with a lot of 'writing' on it. Other examples that I have are very simplistic with just a few characters. Some rock symbols are more square, and some round in petal 'flower' formations. Some are inverted with green specks on a white rock background. Some are in hard jasper that takes a high polish. Some are in more porous material that does not tumble well. Of course, maybe they were left here by aliens, and these were the "newspapers" of the day? Maybe L Ron Hubbard would know?
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OregonBorn
noticing nice landscape pebbles
Member since September 2015
Posts: 86
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Post by OregonBorn on Jul 25, 2016 22:24:05 GMT -5
Dallasite has a wide variety of display qualities, as it is a breccia stone. Some types have small composite material, some large. I have a wild variety in the ones that I have. Mine are in the polisher now, so I cannot snap a photo and post it here. There are photos of larger chunk Dallasite material posted here on ProBoards, and other wild BC cab photos posted online here: bcrockhound.com/tag/dallasite/Do a Dallasite image search using Google, and then do a Chinese Writing Rock search. They overlap and you will see a vast array of variety in the stones.
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OregonBorn
noticing nice landscape pebbles
Member since September 2015
Posts: 86
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Post by OregonBorn on Jul 24, 2016 1:55:18 GMT -5
The above is definitely what is called Chinese Writing Rock up here in the PNW. It is also commonly called Flower rock. I have found it in rivers in WA state and BC, Canada. It is a type of green jasper, with quartz crystals in it. I have several pieces that look similar to this with both more and fewer quartz 'characters' in the jasper. It takes a great polish, and does not scratch with an jagged agate scratch test. The technical term is Dallasite which is a jasper breccia made up with any of the following: quartz, altered basalt, epidote and pumpelleyite. Dallasite is named for a road on North Vancouver Island, BC, Canada where it was first found. "They" say that this rock is only found on VI, but... I have found it in several rivers in the PNW, and the OP found it on a beach in SoCal. So it is certainly not unique to VI. Maybe it is unique to the west coast of North America, but I do not know that for sure. Other examples of this stuff have flower patterns, square patterns, different colors, and a range of breccia components in the rock. They make great cabs from this stuff. I have one with a light green streak through it with a mish mash of chunks, and this type of green jasper Chinese Writing rock on either end. It is really cool stuff, and I have been looking for more of it (though it is rare and hard to find).
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OregonBorn
noticing nice landscape pebbles
Member since September 2015
Posts: 86
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Post by OregonBorn on Jul 18, 2016 15:44:28 GMT -5
Holy smokes. I take it that you are a cabaholic?
On top of being completely jaded, I am a picture jasper junkie. I am nephrite green with envy.
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OregonBorn
noticing nice landscape pebbles
Member since September 2015
Posts: 86
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Post by OregonBorn on Jul 13, 2016 19:31:39 GMT -5
I use SiC for grinding really coarse and chunky stuff, but I got a box of AO 80 from Harbor Freight for really cheap and I have been using that for course stuff that does not need much shaping, like river rock that needs a good grinding but not serious shaping. I run it with soap in one of my larger rolling tumblers for 10 days w/o adding any more AO, and it gives me interesting results. Some stuff does not work so well and needs another round of coarse AO or even SiC in the large 12# or 15# rotary. Other stuff winds up ready for 220 SiC, and some stuff is near polished and I move it up to 600 SiC, both of which I run in my one of my Mini-sonic vibes for 2-3 days w/o any soap or rubber bumpers(soap tends to foam up too much and the rubber bumpers are pushed to the top and out of the spin cycle by the virbator). Then I run them with 1200 AO polish in the smaller roller tumblers for a week with soap and rubber buffers that I made from cutting roofing rubber into 1/4" pieces. Then I burnish them with soap/bumpers for a few hours. Slag glass and obsidian I then run in micron AO for a finer polish.
I also use high quality quartz sand as a pre-clean to cut off the crud and dirt from rocks before I decide whether I want to tumble them or not. I got a 5 gallon bucket of sand from Carmel beach last year that works well for that. There used to be what was called the "sand plant: at Pebble Beach where the Spanish Bay resort and golf coarse are now. They used to get the sand there to use for making high quality glass, as well as missile heads at Lockheed. "They" say not to tumble with sand, but I have had good results using it as a pre-tumble media.
Question for the OP, why the sugar added in some of your runs? I never tried that. Simple syrup?
I wore out one Mini-Sonic tumbler barrel using coarse SiC, and they are not cheap. So I do not use coarse in the vibe tumblers any more. The vibes also push too much polish into the cracks and voids for me so I prefer to polish using roller tumblers with soap to reduce the polish push-in and the bumpers to reduce the rock impact.
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OregonBorn
noticing nice landscape pebbles
Member since September 2015
Posts: 86
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Post by OregonBorn on Jul 13, 2016 17:58:56 GMT -5
Off hand I would say that it looks like Hampton Butte wood to me. I have a lot of that stuff and there is quite a variety in porosity and green, tan and white color in them.
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OregonBorn
noticing nice landscape pebbles
Member since September 2015
Posts: 86
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Post by OregonBorn on Jul 13, 2016 17:51:51 GMT -5
Looking at the general toxic effects of diesel fuel, the most damaging aspects reported are all from breathing diesel exhaust fumes, and not exposure to diesel fuel itself. Exposure to skin seems to be almost under the radar according to WHO and other reports that I have studied. I do not plan on bathing in the stuff. Silicosis seems to be a far more likely hazard when dealing with cutting rocks from this area (agate and jasper), so I wear protective air filtration gear for that anyway. Also before everyone spontaneously ignites on this subject, there is biodiesel, which I was considering as a much more likely alternative. That is made of veggie oil that has had the glycerine (sticky stuff) removed. It is less toxic that table salt. It also has a much higher flash point than petroleum based diesel. Also the 30 wt ND oil will bring the flash point up even more. Diesel flash point (#2) >52 °C (126 °F) 30 wt motor oil flash point 215 °C (420 °F) Biodiesel flash point >130 °C (266 °F) Veggie diesel won't properly lubricate or cool. I looked into veggie based fuels, hydraulic oil and solvent cleaners from a local manufacturer a few years back. The company owner, who is a chemical engineer, sent me away when I told him what I wanted to do. Veggie oil has huge molecules compared to petroleum and will not adequately saturate the point of the cut is what he told me. The problem with looking at data sheets for health info on cutting with diesel is that the data sheets were written with only the customary use in mind. Barranca's opinion on diesel... www.barrancadiamond.com/pdf/tec/bd_slab_saw_coolants.pdfIf you are ok with having to deodorize your slabs and are determined to go with cheap I know of another local option that is safer than diesel, but stinky. If you're interested let me know and I'll dig up the info. I have no issues with deodorizing cut rocks. Though I am in no hurry now, I am still interested in finding out what to use for a cheaper cutting oil as I will likely get a larger saw sooner than later. I have all this rock that I have collected that I want to cut... way too much to cut at the lap shop in PDX.
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OregonBorn
noticing nice landscape pebbles
Member since September 2015
Posts: 86
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Post by OregonBorn on Jul 13, 2016 17:37:45 GMT -5
Oh, let me tell ya, they are the best! The recipe has been handed down in my family for generations. It's a secret! Cannot divulge the exact recipe, but I will say that the stew was thickened with a cup or two of red GA clay, and there have been several additions of 30 grit (in one cup increments). The seasoned soup stones? Some smalls, some mediums and some noggin knockers, lol. Been rolling in the 12 lb (or is it 15 lb?) Scott Murray for five or six weeks now. Using the rotary for rough only, finer and polish will be done in the vibe. That is similar to the way that I do them. I have a Loretone 12# and a Scott Murray 15# that I do the coarse tumbling in. Then I move the smaller rock to the vibrators for medium and fine, but I switch back to the smaller rotary tumblers for fine polish, as I like soap in the polish soup and I use cut up rubber chips (about 1/4 inch square) as bumpers in the polish mix. The soap makes too many suds in the vibrators. Also the rubber bumpers all get pushed up to the top of the slurry in the vibrators that I have (Mini-Sonics).
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OregonBorn
noticing nice landscape pebbles
Member since September 2015
Posts: 86
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Post by OregonBorn on Jun 30, 2016 16:17:59 GMT -5
I used to clean with xylene and no gloves or respirator when I didn't know better, but I will never recommend it on a public forum. The guy I got my end cuts from says he uses the garage flood/oil spill cleaner absorption cut rock cleaning method. I used to use xylene a lot (as well as lacquer thinner) when I was doing silk screen work. I was gloved up and used a respirator though. But at that time I also smoked a pack of cigarettes a day. Then I quit smoking and moved to SoCal which was equivalent to smoking again. Go figure. Dial soap has an antibacterial compound in it that supposedly causes cancer. Triclosan. Also there is a huge law suit against Monsanto now that claims that Glyphosate causes cancer (the main ingredient in Roundup, a commonly used contact weed killer).
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OregonBorn
noticing nice landscape pebbles
Member since September 2015
Posts: 86
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Post by OregonBorn on Jun 30, 2016 16:05:57 GMT -5
I went to a sale a while back and got to see what a 24 inch saw looks like after a shed burns up around it. Also, while the motor oil may be relatively safe, the diesel is packed full of additives to make it burn cleaner, none of which are particularly good for humans, in addition to the diesel being extremely carcinogenic all on it's own. Looking at the general toxic effects of diesel fuel, the most damaging aspects reported are all from breathing diesel exhaust fumes, and not exposure to diesel fuel itself. Exposure to skin seems to be almost under the radar according to WHO and other reports that I have studied. I do not plan on bathing in the stuff. Silicosis seems to be a far more likely hazard when dealing with cutting rocks from this area (agate and jasper), so I wear protective air filtration gear for that anyway. Also before everyone spontaneously ignites on this subject, there is biodiesel, which I was considering as a much more likely alternative. That is made of veggie oil that has had the glycerine (sticky stuff) removed. It is less toxic that table salt. It also has a much higher flash point than petroleum based diesel. Also the 30 wt ND oil will bring the flash point up even more. Diesel flash point (#2) >52 °C (126 °F) 30 wt motor oil flash point 215 °C (420 °F) Biodiesel flash point >130 °C (266 °F)
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