Coral colored coral. Exact match.

[jamesp]

Started out ight yellow/brown. From a 10 foot circle higher above water line than most. Pieces from over a dozen corals. Go figure.



Learned a lesson. Do NOT cook wet coral. The big piece was in wet clay and the small one is basically river gravel at this site. Both very wet and both fractured heavily.
Probably will take at least a month in the greenhouse. Will put close to the wood stove to assist drying. Nice purple color,hmmmm

[Drummond Island Rocks]

those have perfect color. They sure do tumble nice but I am really starting to like the cabs even better. Need to slab more and stop hitting them all with that darn ratchet-hammer.

Chuck

[jamesp]

Still experimenting Chuck. Just bought a load back. The water finally dropped. But i can't cook the wetter ones because they shatter.Gotta let them dry or precook at 200. Still learning. LOL.

[Deleted]

+1 to pre-cook at 200F - do NOT let it boil though.

[Fossilman]

Awesome James.............Coral is some cool stuff!

[jamesp]

Well thats's the deal. 212 will boil and burst-duh. That's why they precook at 200. I is much dryer w/the kitchen convection oven w/high air circulation.
Kitchen oven is rough on sex life. Out in the dog house where it's safe.

[Deleted]

YOU KNEW THAT! HAHA

[jamesp]

Damage by boiling or damage to sex life or both. Never even thought about the boil -duuuuhhhhh.

Initial colors are variable and electric. Dried a load last nite. Starting the warm uo this morning. I chipped them into tumbles.

That way they can be dried (at 200!) and cooked.

I had to weld a new table in the oven. It needed a heat conduction isolator. The bottom of the containers were way too hot so a shield and an air gap should solve that.
Like an electric burner tends to burn food at bottom of pot...

[grayfingers]

[jamesp]

My Dad was squadron Commander for the fighter jet pilots on the USS Coral Sea. You close Bill. I am the man.

[Deleted]

Jim are those the same heaters used in electric water heaters?

If not, can the electric water heaters be run dry?

[jamesp]

I think electric water heaters will self destruct in air. They are exactly like your kitchen oven, but lower wattage. That's right. Kitchen oven is 2000 watts +. This oven is 1000 watts. At least thats what my research came up with. It did not make sense to me.

But a dry water heater does not nessecarily burn the element does it? I would use ones designed for air. End of story.

[pghram]

Beautiful batch of coral. Will you also cook the purple or have you already cooked it?

Rich

[Deleted]

If that new stuff was closer to the surface and already cooked color is it possible that there could have been one hell of a fire there at some point in time? Beautiful stuff.
Jim

[jamesp]

I have found out some weird stuff heating this stuff.
1- hotter oven takes it to new colors. But to a point, higher than 600F and you risk fractures
2-got to let it dry or heat and hold at 200 to dry it out. coral from the water or wet soil will fracture terribly. 6 hours at 200F and it is ready to cook
3-this surprised me. I pulled the load out 2 days ago and was not pleased. I looked at it yesterday and thought it had gotten a deeper color. Today my 15 pounds of lite lavender chips are rich lavender.
Yesterday i put the deeper colored lavender from another load next to it and sure enough it is changing.

Jim, this stuff is 20 feet in the ground and is only exposed because the river washed the soil away. It is possible fire got to it but pretty unlikely. Cause it is in a river valley. But one never knows what
the past has done.

The 15 pounds of purple is cooked and a great success Rich. I am very happy about that. However i do not think i was very successful at finding the coral that turns purple on last week's trip. That bothers me. I did find some new stuff. I will post some more soon.