New batch of lace agate

[chaosdsm]

Finally remembered to get some "before" photos....  New 2lb batch of lace agate going into the Vevor for a 4-day cleaning run, using about 1/2 cup of rock chips (about 1/16" pieces consisting of agate, jasper, and garnet), 1/4 teaspoon of Dawn, & a teaspoon of grit to help loosen some of the dirt & clay that's on some of these.  Not sure why, but they were shipped wet... 

After cleaning I'll see if I can grind away any obviously bad areas, then they'll go in with the 8lbs of agates I already have in stage 1.  




Purchased from Amazon!


As a size reference, the smallest of these two pieces below is roughly 1/2" x 3/4" x 7/8"

[NRG]

You may want to put some vinegar on that material. I have a very strong feeling it’s not agate.

[chaosdsm]

Sept 3, 2024 10:04:01 GMT -5 NRG said:

You may want to put some vinegar on that material. I have a very strong feeling it’s not agate.

What would vinegar do???   You may be right, only about 1/3 of the material displays any translucence.   

[pebblesky]

Stalactite or calcite could slightly react with vinegar by forming bubbles on the surface. I still hope they are agates.

[chaosdsm]

Sept 3, 2024 21:29:32 GMT -5 pebblesky said:

Stalactite or calcite could slightly react with vinegar by forming bubbles on the surface. I still hope they are agates.

I put 3 of the smaller pieces in cleaning vinegar 6%, about 35 minutes ago, I see no reaction so far.  There is one piece that looks like it could be part of a stalactite/stalagmite, I just put it in & saw one tiny stream of bubbles, but they stopped after about 5 or 6 seconds.   I'll leave them sit overnight.

[NRG]

Sept 3, 2024 22:27:19 GMT -5 chaosdsm said:

Sept 3, 2024 21:29:32 GMT -5 pebblesky said:

Stalactite or calcite could slightly react with vinegar by forming bubbles on the surface. I still hope they are agates.

I put 3 of the smaller pieces in cleaning vinegar 6%, about 35 minutes ago, I see no reaction so far.  There is one piece that looks like it could be part of a stalactite/stalagmite, I just put it in & saw one tiny stream of bubbles, but they stopped after about 5 or 6 seconds.   I'll leave them sit overnight.

Try ironout or limeaway or pool acid. You will get rapid bubbling with the stronger acids

[NRG]

Sept 3, 2024 19:55:50 GMT -5 chaosdsm said:

Sept 3, 2024 10:04:01 GMT -5 NRG said:

You may want to put some vinegar on that material. I have a very strong feeling it’s not agate.

What would vinegar do???   You may be right, only about 1/3 of the material displays any translucence.   

Translucence is not my symptom. Its the lack of conchoidal fractures on the broken faces. Instead we see a granular break.

[chaosdsm]

Just got home and checked on the rocks, the vinegar did nothing at all.  The vinegar tests at 2.5 on my PH meter, it's also the only acid I have right now.  

I've not noticed any conchoidal fractures on any of the other agates that I've previously received from Rock Shed: Montana Moss Agate and Mexican Crazy Lace.

This was sold as Summerville Crazy Lace Agate out of Summerville Georgia.  What I have looks pretty much identical to the various Etsy listings for Summerville Crazy Lace Agate.

[NRG]

chaosdsm

I looked at summerville CL. I do not believe that it is agate. It may be dolostone or even dolomite but agate it is not. The Dolostone reacts less to acid in my experience.

Mexican crazy lace is mostly just rough chunks. You would have to break a chip off to see it.

Montana moss agate is very glassy and definitely has a conchoidal break. I am totally open to being wrong about summerville!

What happens when you scratch it with a steel knife?

[pebblesky]

There are several threads about summerville crazy lace tumble, all without the final results. I am really curious to see how they would end up.

[jasoninsd]

Sept 5, 2024 11:13:29 GMT -5 pebblesky said:

There are several threads about summerville crazy lace tumble, all without the final results. I am really curious to see how they would end up.

I'm curious now too...

chaosdsm - I'm looking forward to seeing how these turn out. I get what NRG is questioning about them looking like Summerville pieces. I've worked some of that material and it definitely doesn't work like an agate...

[pebblesky]

jasoninsd interesting that I was just reading your post:
forum.rocktumblinghobby.com/post/1183616/thread

It seems the material is soft, and is not tumble friendly because the aggressive movement could break the stones apart along some even softer layers. I checked with the material multiple times on etsy last year. The roughs look nice and they are relatively cheap. But I am yet to see a satisfactory tumble.

[jasoninsd]

Sept 5, 2024 11:53:30 GMT -5 pebblesky said:

jasoninsd interesting that I was just reading your post:
forum.rocktumblinghobby.com/post/1183616/thread

It seems the material is soft, and is not tumble friendly because the aggressive movement could break the stones apart along some even softer layers. I checked with the material multiple times on etsy last year. The roughs look nice and they are relatively cheap. But I am yet to see a satisfactory tumble.

I'm an SOOO glad you posted the link to that! I've been thinking about what rmf had posted...and for the life of me I couldn't remember the technical jargon...and couldn't remember where it was posted! BIG THANK YOU!! 

[Jugglerguy]

I was down there last winter. I have most of my tumbling material done with the first stage and LOTS of holes opened up. I think they called it chert when I was there, as well as agate. Parts are very soft like limestone, but the banded stuff has held up pretty well so far. Whether it's any good for tumbling, I don't know, but I had a blast that day collecting it with fantastic5.

[chaosdsm]

Sept 5, 2024 11:53:30 GMT -5 pebblesky said:

jasoninsd interesting that I was just reading your post:
forum.rocktumblinghobby.com/post/1183616/thread

It seems the material is soft, and is not tumble friendly because the aggressive movement could break the stones apart along some even softer layers. I checked with the material multiple times on etsy last year. The roughs look nice and they are relatively cheap. But I am yet to see a satisfactory tumble.

The material I received seems very hard, it's currently going through stage 1 in my Vevor rotary, I'll check progress on my next day off which is Saturday. There was a bit of sand and red clay on some of the pieces, most of which came out pretty easily during my cleaning cycle & it seemed to come through the cleaning quite well with no breaks that I could find.

.

[chaosdsm]

After 2 nights some pretty good progress!  I tried to scratch two of the rocks with an S7 tool steel rod, I basically wrote on the rocks with the steel like you would write on paper with a pencil 

At least one of the rocks did break apart though, there's a half dozen 1/4 to 3/8" chunks in there now.  

Starting to really see some nice patterning    photo time    Not sure why, but all of these photos appear much darker on here than they are on my photo hosting site    

[chaosdsm]

This one was the heaviest overall at 74 grams out of the bag


After about 4 days of 36 grit, it's down to 66 grams.  The face that's up in the photo is relatively flat already, so I may just run through my diamond sharpening stones to flatten that side.

I hope Blinky (red ghost from Pac-Man) can maintain....
 
But it's already fairly small to begin with, and there's an angle right across the left eye.

You can see it pretty easily here.


Definitely like the patterns running through these!!!




This one is also pretty flat to begin with, so I'm also going to try to flatten it on the diamond sharpening stones too.


The rest will all go back into the tumbler with more 36 grit, I'll probably run it for 5 days this time.

[chaosdsm]

So I hand flatened this one with 200 grit diamond sharpening stone.  It took about 3 minutes.  I can totally see this being a nice oval pendant or ring!  It's about the size of a quarter as is.


Is it just me... or does that middle part  with the closed dark ring almost look like the outline of Illinois?

[chaosdsm]

I put a few more minutes on the 200 grit stone, then about 3 minutes at 750 grit and it's starting to look good.  Still have a couple of 200 grit scratches to get out (running mostly L/R), and there's a few 750 grit scratches(mostly U/D)  from where the diamond sharpening stone isn't worn down evenly, even after 18 years of use.



Then there's one distinctive line in the lower part that I think is a fracture  

Back to the 750 stone for a while, then I'll follow up with these: 

 
Before switching to SiC wet/dry sandpaper @ 3000, 5000, 7000, & 10,000

[chaosdsm]

Got it run through the 1500 grit diamond plate, looking pretty decent now.  The fracture I saw is definitely a fracture, though it's less noticeable after using the 1500 grit.  




Here's a closeup of the fracture after the first 750 grit pass



The next rock is much less flat to start with, so I'll be starting with the 80 grit diamond plate on it, but that will be for another day, as will the rest of the work on this rock.