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[Stonemon]

I picked up a chunk of rough in Prineville. Paid a lot for it and it was pretty badly fractured. 2"x2"x1.5"
I just bought a new 303 for my trim saw and finally got brave enough start hacking on it.
I got lucky and should be able to get my coin back...
Photos on a plain white paper under a very smokey sky.  Our neck of the woods caught fire yesterday and we have a nasty one burning about 5 miles from our house. Edgy

[lithicbeads]

I miss the good old days and piles of holley.Nice stones and stay safe.

[rocks2dust]

Nice deep grape color 

[Stonemon]

It is getting really hard to find the rough with good color saturation. It took a lot of grinding to get these ones out of that chunk.
I have been using cheap Chinese blades on my trim saw.    The new 303 cured me of that. I will now stack those others for rough grinding.
I paid for the blade with a couple of cuts the cheap Chinese blades are not able to make.
Here is that second piece on a slab of basalt... more true to what the eye sees.

[hummingbirdstones]

You did a really great job on those stones!  As Lithic said, stay safe.

[irockhound]

Love Purple Agate.  Holly is so similar to the material I found out in the Mojave but only a small fraction has the more saturated Purple.  Does Holly also have green host material associated with it?  The material I find in Mojave tends to concentrate around a granular Green material (not an ash) but almost like it has chromium in it.  The majority of the area the material tends more to the blues but when you find the purples it is amazing.  When I saw the tear drop cab it reminded me so much of my favorite cab cut from the area.  Grats on some great cabs and material.

[lithicbeads]

The holley was in basalt.

[Stonemon]

The holley was in basalt.

Yes, nicely weathered and receptive to a pick! Great digging. I remember driving my 1964 Mercury Comet up there and sleeping in the back seat so I could dig on Sunday too. 17 years old (or young) at the time. If I had any idea what the stuff would fetch now, I would not have sold it all...

[gemfeller]

Great cabs of a beautiful material.  I bought a couple of pounds of Holley rough in Quartzsite a bunch of years ago but after cutting my cabs they often crazed like cracky opal.  Does anyone know if that's a common problem with that material?  Is it caused by dehydration as with opal or something else? 

[lithicbeads]

I have never had that happen. I wonder how the previous owner treated the rough.Quartz and feldspar stones will both hold quite a bit of water at times but the result when they dry is usually a bit of loss of transparentcy.

[Stonemon]

Holley agate has a lot of what us locals call "veil fractures." These are ghost like fractures that often do not show up when you are cutting. Sometimes I will miss one right up to the last wheel. I have even been working on cropping a photo for the shop and had one of them show for the first time. It can make you crazy When the stone dries out they show up more. Often they occur parallel to each other or in a cross hatched network that does resemble crazing.
I do not think it has any relation to hydration as Holley is a chalcedony that should not be absorbent.
This picture shows one of the veil fractures that showed up late in cutting a piece.
Holley can be a real pain to cut but when it works it is beautiful.
One old timer I knew would candle his Holley before cutting to make the fractures appear.

[lithicbeads]

 I used to get paid in holley blue by a jeweler I cut for quite a bit.Never  sold a bit of it .What is  the price  range recently?

[Stonemon]

I have not seen it by the pound for years. This last trip to Prineville, I picked up 3 small Gerber baby food jars for $20 apiece. 5 or 6 small pieces of mid grade in each. There was one dealer who had a bit better rock in quart jars for $300.
Mostly seeing it by the gram, $3 to $5. The piece I cut those two from was about 3 oz. $60 Crazy expensive.
I used to sell top AAA+ for $8.00 a pound. Those days are gone.

[gemfeller]

I have never had that happen. I wonder how the previous owner treated the rough.Quartz and feldspar stones will both hold quite a bit of water at times but the result when they dry is usually a bit of loss of transparentcy.

I suspect the seller had done something to the rough.  It had great color but after cutting it crazed just like some opals.  The fractures weren't veils.  The stone seemed unstable for some reason.  I've never experienced anything similar with other chalcedonies or agate. 

[irockhound]

Interesting on the veils.  I have those show up in the Mojave material also.  I had assumed that it had something to do with the polishing stage like a heat build up.  I can start with super clean pieces and you never know if a veil will rear it's head or not.  The majority I have cut are clean but the veils are still not uncommon.  I see veils a lot in Nipomo agates that tend to have a lot of opal with them.  One thing I noticed with the Mojave material was that I actually got a double refraction on a regular domed piece.  I need to find that one again and take a pic of it since it was unexpected and I had not heard of that in an agate.  I'll see if I can find some of the rough and the cabs and post in a different topic so they don't distract from your wonderful cabs.