Hey Taogem, and everyone! Awesome site and forum, very informative. Thanks for offering it for us all!
My name is Shain and have been playing around with rocks for over 12 years, collecting for over 20years. Only in the last 8years have i been really into lapidary, specifically, cabochon cutting. Some of you may have already seen some of my work, like in my signature below this post(please note the purple Botswana cabochon was cut by Shannon Saunders aka;weeshan).
I really enjoy jasper and agate, and specialize in rare examples, blue mountain would be my fav in that group. I run a small biz out of my home in AZ for the last 4years, and before worked for and partnered with AZrockshop for roughly 4years. I house a huge inventory of rough from Idaho and Oregon, around 25tons, which recently grew another ton, d'oh! I find all kinds of goodies in these overstocks, and have sorted most of the bulk out. I like to think i hold one of the largest old stock rough collection of Antelope jasper, which is a lesser know Owyhee type picture jasper, also know as a flower jasper. I got Regency and graveyard plume coming out of my ears and have found rare pieces of candy red Qiuntzite opal in these overstocks.
I used to frequent online rock forums and ran one myself for 9months, but got burnt out from to much work and no fun. Plus, i watch the economy pretty well(at least i think i do, lol), so i went and got a part-time job baking artisan bread at nights last May. This really took time away from my online community and my activity in it. So i closed the forum and only maintain a blog now. I also have a punkgrass band, which we just finished a 6song demo last week. Spent 10hours in the studio and had a blast. We are just getting to play out more regularly now. And if anyone is in the Phoenix area and like good upbeat punkgrass music, look us up.
I am still busy daily with new cabochon projects, and have recently started up carving more in practice to work on some nice Jade my friend Tony over at pacificjadeart.com gave me for a carving contest. I am currently working on some really nice large dry-head cabs, a super fine Blue Mt cab and a wild Montana agate cab i will show off i the coming week. Thanks again Taogem for the great forum and look forward to chatting with ya all when i got more time.
Royal Sahara Jasper